


Blood Island

by TakerFoxx



Category: Original Work
Genre: Action/Adventure, Desert Island, Dinosaurs, Eventual Smut, F/F, Golden Age of Piracy, Lesbian Vampires, Mermaids, Pirates, Survival Horror, Treasure Hunting, Vampires, Wilderness Survival
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-23
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-15 06:00:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 31,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28933677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TakerFoxx/pseuds/TakerFoxx
Summary: So far, life had done Nuriel Cunningham no favors. The orphaned daughter of a petty thief, she's had to grow up on the streets, with nothing but her wits, her late father's advice, and whatever luck she can scrounge up to keep her alive.However, now that luck seems to have ran out. After being discovered passing as a boy on a ship sailing the Caribbean, Nuriel is blamed for the ship's troubles and thrown overboard, seemingly to her demise. But rather than die, she awakes on the shores of a strange and terrifying island, one inhabited by monsters from a bygone age. Now she has to use every bit of cunning and skill just to stay alive, as one false step could cause her to be torn apart for some ancient creature's dinner.But as she works to stay alive and uncover the island's secrets, she becomes aware of something very troubling. There is someone else on the island, someone not quite human, a creature with glowing red eyes watching her from the shadows. And though the creature seems benevolent, perhaps even friendly, Nuriel is not about to let her guard down. After all, every stranger is an enemy, and there is nothing more dangerous than the attention of another person.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 15





	1. A Brush With Death

Contrary to popular belief, dying is actually quite easy. It’s everything that leads up to it that’s a load of piss.

Take, for example, being thrown off the side off a merchant’s ship into the sea while besieged by a tropical hurricane. There’s the terror as you fly through the air, limbs flailing and raging winds tearing at your clothes as the roiling waves rush up to meet you. Then your body slams into the water hard enough to drive the air from your lungs in big, fat bubbles. You find yourself sinking into a void of grey, the salt water stinging your eyes as you stare up at the rapidly retreating surface, the cold and shock keeping your arms and legs from fighting back.

Then realization hits, and shock is replaced by pure terror. Though you know that it’s hopeless, that you’re all alone miles from land with your only point of safety swiftly fleeing, you still frantically kick with your numbing legs and pump your arms, desperate for air. The surface stops moving away, but you’re approaching too slow, and already it feels as if your chest is caving in on itself, squeezing the life from your lungs.

Then your head breaks through, the watery blanket replaced by the torrent coming down in hammer-blows. But your relief is short-lived, because as soon as you open your mouth to gulp down your first lungful of air a wave runs you over, sending you spinning back down.

Now your lungs are screaming. You had accidentally swallowed some of the seawater, and you cough violently, sending more bubbles billowing away. Again you force your way back up. You try to inhale, but all the coughing is getting in the way, and the rising and falling of the sea makes keeping afloat nearly impossible.

As you struggle to keep your head above the waves, your manage to blink enough water from your eyes to catch sight of the ship, barely more than a silhouette in the dark. You panic and start waving your arms, praying that someone on board would take pity on you, that one of the sailors will throw out a rope or maybe even dive in to save you. After all, some had protested throwing you in. Surely they wouldn’t leave you to die.

But either they don’t see you or they don’t care, as the ship now has its back to you as the pounding wind pulls it away further and further. You stare in disbelief as your last hope withers and dies. This can’t be happening. After everything you had endured and survived, it can’t end here like this, abandoned to die alone and forgotten in the middle of the Caribbean.

And then, as you watch your only chance of salvation leave you to your fate, another wave, larger than any other, swells up behind you. Before you know what’s happening it swallows you up and sends you tumbling head-over-heels back down below.

Again you try to fight it, try to force yourself back to the surface, but you now have no idea where the surface even is. Everything around you is dark and endless.

You whirl around to try to find some clue of where to go, some part with just enough light to indicate the way up. You find it, but as you reorient yourself you find your limbs strangely unresponsive. Again and again you order them into motion, but your body and mind no longer share the will to live. _What’s the point of fighting,_ your body reasons, _if there’s nothing out there to fight towards?_

And in a terrible moment of clarity, you realize that you don’t have an answer.

Then both body and mind start to sink, one descending into the black of the sea while the other is enveloped by an entirely different type of darkness. The further you fall, the easier it becomes, and soon your mind concedes the argument and surrenders itself.

 _This isn’t so bad,_ you find yourself thinking while you’re still able. _At least it won’t hurt anymore._

Anyway, to make a long story short, that last part really isn’t as terrible as it’s made out to be. But everything leading up to it is pure misery.

But there’s another part that most people don’t get to experience, so it’s often left out of the poems and tales: just how hard and painful waking up again from all that is.

Nuriel Cunningham found that out in stages that played out in reverse from before. First was the uneasy border between restful darkness and consciousness. Despite how valiantly she had fought off the darkness of oblivion before, she now found herself reluctant to leave it. She had already succumbed to its cold, comforting embrace, so she ought to be allowed to remain.

But now it was the light calling to her, and it turns out to be just as relentless as the darkness had been before.

 _Piss off,_ she thought sleepily. _I’m dead. Leave me be._

But just as she hadn’t wanted to be thrown off that boat and hadn’t wanted to be swallowed by the sea, her wishes were continued to be ignore. Slowly and surely awareness seeped back into her body. It began a faraway blob of sound that steadily grew louder and more distinct, until she was able to recognize the sound of waves gently crashing against a shore mixed in with the calls of seabirds.

She then became aware that one side of her body was lying against something soft and gritty, while the other felt curiously warm. The smell of salt fills her nostrils, further dragging her back to reality.

It was then that she started to consider the possibility that she might not be dead.

Damn it.

Her eyes were still closed, but there was enough light shining through her eyelids to tell her that it was currently daytime…ish. Still, she was in no hurry to open them. Where she was and whatever it was that had brought her there could wait.

But then she became aware of yet another sensation, one that wasn’t at all familiar. Something was tickling her face around the nose and upper lip, like someone was brushing her with a cattail, and for whatever reason felt like chittering while it did it. She frowned and her face twitched, the only protest she felt like making.

Still, didn’t stop, and in fact was becoming kind of annoying. Finally irritation had drawn her far enough back to wakefulness for her to crack one eye open.

The immediate onslaught of sunlight made for a painful blur. She blinked and squinted. There did seem to be something nearby, something close to her face and-

The next thing Nuriel knew, she was wide awake and several feet off the ground, arms and legs thrown around the trunk of a palm tree like a terrified monkey, gaping down at the thing in the sand below.

The thing had turned out to be a great big hideous…bug…crab… _thing._ It looked like someone had combined all the worst parts of a cockroach and lobster together, resulting in something with a wide, flat back made of segmented parts, a great many legs, and two waving antennae, which had been the things tickling her face. And in addition to being hideous, it was just so damned _big._

The nasty thing seemed to be perplexed by her sudden exit. It turned itself this way and that, antennae stretched to find some trace of her.

Well, Nuriel certainly wasn’t coming back down again while it was there. She looked around, wondering how the hell she was going to get rid of it.

Then her eyes fell upon a cluster of large, oblong husks hanging from the tree, right above her head. Coconuts. She had fled into a coconut tree.

Gripping the tree with her thighs, Nuriel reached up to grab a coconut. It took some twisting and yanking, but it came free. She then looked down at the monster, plotted the trajectory in her head, and let her missile fly.

It missed, landing with a plop in the sand next to the monster. A spray of sand fell over its back, causing it to jerk around in surprise.

Scowling, Nuriel yanked another coconut down and tried again. Another miss.

Now Nuriel was more frustrated than frightened, and hitting the damned thing was becoming a matter of pride. She wrenched a third coconut free and threw it down.

This time it hit. The coconut bounced off the monster’s back and sent it skittering away. Nuriel watched as it fled the beach to disappear into the sea. She smiled. Good enough.

Her relief was short-lived though, as she then came to realize that she was higher up than she was really comfortable with, and now that the strength that her panic had given her was wearing off, her ordeal had left her exhausted, and scaring that thing off had taken what little she had left.

She fell.

She didn’t remember actually landing, but sometime later the world decided to give her a break and stop swimming around her. When it did, she was lying on her back in the sand, staring up at the tree.

Though she had regained her senses, Nuriel remained still, listening to the sound of the ocean. She didn’t _feel_ hurt, but that in itself didn’t mean much. She had seen enough sailors fall from the masts to know that it sometimes took time for the pain to register, and for all she knew her body was broken to pieces.

Still, though she ached a bit, the agony never came. Finally Nuriel tried to lever herself up into a sitting position.

She was still a little woozy, but still she managed to get up without much trouble. A quick self-assessment confirmed that, yes, she was unhurt.

With a slow exhale of relief, Nuriel stretched out her legs and reclined back, elbows in the sand. Wow, that had been a bit of luck. Though to be honest, the fact that she was falling out of trees in the first place instead of having her bones picked clean by jellyfish was in itself quite a bit of luck as well. Hopefully she hadn’t exhausted her quota.

Shaking her head, Nuriel finally was able to take stock of her surroundings. The best she could tell, she was on a small beach that curved around a bay. Across the water she could see two massive cliff walls wrapped around the bay’s other end, with a small gap in the middle leading out to sea.

Nuriel let out a low whistle. She didn’t have a clue how she had gotten from the depths to the beach, but if it had been chance, then her luck had been greater than she had thought if she had been washed right through the gap instead of being smashed against those walls of stone.

Then she turned in her seat to get a look at what was behind her. A wall of green greeted her, a thick and lush jungle. She wasn’t sure if that was a good sign. She still didn’t know if she was on an island or the mainland, but if it was an island than a jungle meant that there would be food for her to find. However, it also meant that just about anything could come at her through it, and she’d never see it coming until it had her: panthers, leopards, ocelots, even howler monkeys if they were feeling nasty enough. And that was to say nothing of the chittering bugs coming for her from the sea…

Nuriel shivered, but she banished those thoughts from her mind. No, she was alive, and that was a miracle in itself. She wasn’t going to dwell on death.

Though speaking of which, exactly how was she alive to begin with? Nuriel frowned. All of her memories from before she had woken up weren’t exactly clear.

She remembered being thrown into the sea; _that_ probably wasn’t going to dim in her mind anytime soon. And she vividly remembered her struggles to keep her head above water. But between then and waking up was nothing.

Nuriel pressed a hand against her forehead and slowly breathed in and out. Her fingers were starting to shake. She was no stranger to having her life threatened, and this had not been the first time that another human being had tried to take it. But none of them had gotten that close before. And it had been years since she had been specifically singled out like that. The last time had been when she was still a scrawny little child, when Papa had-

Then her eyes popped wide open as the air caught in her throat. Papa!

She hastily drew her legs up. Her boots were still there, somehow having been prevented from being torn off during her struggles. And hidden in a small sheathe inside her left boot…

Nuriel felt a surge of relief when her fingers closed around the band of gold that enclosed the slim ivory handle. She pulled out St. George from where she had him hidden and turned him over in her hands, letting the sun glint off the steel and gold.

St. George was a knife: small, easy to hide, but wickedly sharp. The handle was carved from an elephant’s tusk into the shape of a dragon’s head, with two tiny rubies set into the eyes. A golden band was set around the grip. Papa had, as Nuriel’s insistence, named it after St. George the great knight from the stories he had told her, renowned for his slaying of dragons and rescuing of maidens. The name had been a bit of irony on her part. Papa had thought that it was the knight that had enraptured her, but to be honest, she had always like the dragons best. After all, they were just acting in accordance to their natures. Most of the time they merely minded their own business, sleeping away in their great caves. And even those known for terrorizing villages and hamlets only did so because they were hungry. In her mind, if St. George was going to go around stealing away their lives and treasures, then it was only fitting that _her_ dragon would take his name in return.

Nuriel still wasn’t sure how Papa had come across such a beauty, but she had her suspicions. He always had a knack of relieving those more fortunate than them of easily missed valuables. Then it was off to the type of shops that their kind never thought to visit, and they would leave with enough coins to feed themselves for the next few days, maybe even to buy a new coat or pair of shoes.

But St. George was different. From the moment he had shown it off to her Nuriel knew that it was to be theirs, and had begged him not to let it go. He had been hesitant. After all, it was one of the best acquisitions he had ever gotten his hands on, and would fill their bellies with better fare than they had to make due with. But in the end he had relented, though he had warned her to keep it hidden and never, ever let anyone see it, lest they themselves be targeted by thieves.

This she had done, and was glad for it. Now, nearly seven years later, it was all that she had left of him.

St. George looked to have survived the sea without damage, though she would have to be on the watch for rust spots. She wiped away what bits of moisture remained and looked around again. By her estimation, it was early afternoon.

It was then that she finally noticed just how hungry she was, as well as how parched her throat was.

Wiping her mouth, she stood up and warily examined the green wall of the jungle. There was a break in the trees, and what looked like a path beaten into the jungle itself. It didn’t seem to have been made by man, so it was probably due to some large animal.

Nuriel frowned. She was not in much of a hurry to take her chances. If said large animal was unfriendly, then it wouldn’t take kindly to her using its path. And there were any number of other things that would be more than happy to gulp her up.

Still, she needed food, and that was her best chance of finding it. Hopefully she would have to go far before coming across a fruit tree, or some wild tubers, or-

Then her eyes went wide. Wait a minute, she didn’t need to go looking for food! She had just been up a damned coconut tree!

The tree in question still towered over her, and still bore several of its ugly brown husks. There were a few others dotting the beach here and there, but this one seemed to be the one she had the best chance of climbing. After all, she had gotten up it once before, even if she no longer remembered the actual act.

Though now that she was examining closely, how _had_ she gotten up it so quickly? Yes, it sat at a slant, but not a very sharp one, and while the rough rings of its trunk provided hand-and-footholds, they weren’t exactly a ladder. In fact, they barely protruded much at all.

Well, if she had gotten up there once before while in a blind panic, she could do it again. Nuriel spat in her palms, rubbed them together, and set to work.

She got about maybe a fifth of the way up before her fingers gave way and she slid back down.

Scowling in annoyance, she tried again. This time she barely cleared the ground.

A third time! This time she did much better, actually making it more than a third of the distance before she slipped and fell hard on her ass.

Nuriel stood up, wiped off her bottom, and glared up at the tree, which seemed to be mocking her with how un-climbed it was. She kicked it. Stupid thing. It had let her up once before, so why was it now being so stubborn?

Plopping down in the sand with her legs crossed, Nuriel moodily stared out at the ocean as she considered her options. She needed food, there was food right above her head, and so she had to get to it. She had gotten to it once before, so it obviously wasn’t impossible, but for whatever reason that didn’t seem to be happening anymore.

Nuriel sighed. She looked down, where one of the coconuts she had used to pelt the sea-bug with was lying. She reached out with a finger and nudged it back and forth. Of course when she wasn’t even thinking about food she was able to pluck down as many as she wanted, but when she actually needed to-

Then Nuriel blinked.

Waaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiit a minute.

Moments later Nuriel was feeling profoundly relieved and incredibly stupid as she had the coconut resting in her lap. After this was over she was going to take a good, long nap. Maybe then her brain would have rested enough to actually turn on.

Nuriel attacked the thick fibers of the coconut’s husk with her hands, but to her frustration they refused to come loose. She tried biting them off, but just got a sore jaw for her troubles.

The coconut remained as protected as ever. Nuriel rolled it back and forth in her lap. She rubbed her jaw. She scratched her head. There had to be some way to get in.

Then she glanced back up. All around the beach were several clusters of white rocks, worn smooth by the elements. Hmmm.

Nuriel walked over one particular long and flat stone. She laid the coconut on it and searched around until she found a large and heavy rock with enough of an edge. Then she knelt before the coconut, lifted her rock up high with both hands, and brought the sharp edge down.

The first two whacks did absolutely nothing except bend the fibers in a little. The third slipped across the coconut’s body and sent it tumbling across the sand.

As for the rock, it struck the stone slab and a large portion of the edge snapped off.

Nuriel stared down at the two pieces of rock, one in her hands and the other lying next to her knees. She felt her throat start to tighten. As setbacks went, this wasn’t that much of one, but she was having a really, really bad day.

Still, she didn’t let herself cry. Survivors didn’t cry. Survivors didn’t feel sorry for themselves. Survivors used frustration and failure as motivation to find a way to succeed.

 _Close your eyes,_ her father’s voice echoed inside her head. _Let the anger and pain flow through you without damming it up. Then look at the problem again. Quite often, the solution is right in front of you._

So she did just that. She closed her eyes and slowly breathed in and out, releasing a little more of her anger with every breath. She concentrated on the sound of the waves and the cry of the gulls. Soon the shaking stopped and her throat started to loosen.

When she opened her eyes again, she was no less hungry and thirsty, but she did feel a little bit better.

Propping her chin on her fist, Nuriel nudged the smugly unopened coconut with her finger. Maybe St. George could…but no. If her teeth couldn’t rip away the husk, then she wasn’t going to risk blunting her most precious treasure. But the rocks though…

Frowning, she stood up and looked from the coconut to the rocks. Okay, so she probably wasn’t going to be able to cut off the husk, but maybe she could get it off another way.

Picking up the coconut once again, she looked around until she found a gap between two large rocks that was the right size. She jammed it in, this time right-side-up instead of on its side. Then she found another large rock that was more blunt than sharp.

It took a few bashes, but each once crushed the husk a little bit more. Soon the fibers started to separate. Excited by her success, she yanked the coconut out of the gap, sat down with it braced by her legs, and kept smashing it.

Soon the fibers had been separated enough that she was able to stick her fingers in and pull them the rest of the way apart. It took some work, but soon she managed to get her fingers around the hard, brown nut inside and pull it out.

Nuriel grinned. She felt like St. George himself, pulling out the heart of a slain dragon.

Okay, now _that_ had been taken care of, it was time for the sharp rock again.

_Whack. Whack. Whack._

Nuriel hammered down on the coconut. Almost there, almost there.

_Whack. Whack. Crunch._

Nuriel froze as the hand holding the coconut steady was flooded with fluid. She had managed to break the coconut open, but unfortunately she had forgotten to devise a way to save the milk, which was now pouring out onto the rocks.

She quickly opened the coconut into its two halves. There was very little of the milk still collected in each, but she still gulped it down like fine wine. Her eyelids fluttered as she did so. Oh, it felt so lovely going down. 

That done, it was now time for St. George to do his duty. She pulled him out and used him to cut and pry off chunks of the coconut’s starchy white flesh. It wasn’t much, but if one were to see the way she crammed them into her mouth one might excused for thinking them delicious, not that she’d know.

Once the shells had been scraped dry, she grabbed up another coconut and repeated the process, this time taking care to only crack off a small bit at the top rather than split it in half. This time she was able to save most of the milk, and by the time she had finished off all three coconuts she felt much better.

Now that she had taken the edge of her hunger and thirst, Nuriel was able to sit back and look out at the sea and consider her situation.

It had been her fault, at least in part. She had known that she had been getting too old to play the part of the silent cabin boy, no matter how short she cut her hair or how tightly she bound her breasts. She had gotten stupid, thinking she could play the same trick over and over, that nobody would notice. If Father were still around, he would have boxed her ears for having dropped her guard. The last voyage had earned her several sidelong looks from the crew, as well as more than one suspicious inquiry that might have turned to disaster had someone less curious about her sex but more invested in keeping the peace not stepped in to intervene.

She had hoped that that would have been the end of it, but then the storm had hit. It had hit and it had kept hitting, assailing the ship for days on end. More than one man was swept overboard, and in time, even the doughtiest sailor began to fear.

And with fear had come panic, and with panic came the willingness to blame anything and anyone for their predicament.

Which had ended up being her.

Nuriel had been sensing the danger that she had been in for quite some time when they came for her. Of course the storm had scared her as much as any of them, but things had taken a swift turn for the worst when she had noticed the looks she had been starting to get and the mumbled conversations that were taking place around her. And when those conversations had stopped being mumbled and looks stopped wavering when she returned them was when she knew how much danger she was in.

She had tried to hide, of course. She had sailed in ships of the same make in the past and knew where all the best hiding spots were, but it did her no good. If she had still be small, she might have made it, might had managed to fit in a tight, out-of-the-way hole to ride the storm out and hope that tempers would have been quelled along with it. Alas, she had kept up her game longer than she should have, and could no only fit in a few.

They had come for her, just like she had always feared. They had come for her. They had found her. They had seized her and pulled her kicking and shrieking up onto the deck, into the fury of the storm.

From there, while two men held onto her arms and another her neck, her trousers had been yanked down, exposing her sex for all to see. That had been it. In calmer times, the more levelheaded might have come to her defense still. Some might had even laughed it off and made jokes, while the officers would have settled for simply locking her in the brig for the rest of the trip and dropping her off at the first port of call.

Those had not been calmer times. They had turned on her. All of them, even the ones that had stood up for her in the past, even the ones who had taken a liking to her, who had told her stories, who had snuck her rum at mealtimes and stood up for her when the others had gotten suspicious. They all turned on her, they all betrayed her. Every last one of them.

And when she had been lifted up by her throat, kicking and helpless, and thrown into the sea, no one had tried to stop it from happening.

Nuriel gazed balefully out to sea. Well, they had failed. She had survived. And somewhere out there were the men who had betrayed her, who had tried to murder her.

She wondered if the ship had pulled through the storm intact, if the men who had done this to her had also survived. She wondered if any of them felt remorse.

She hoped to find them again one day, after she had escaped this island. Then they could try to justify to her what they had done. Maybe they would even ask for forgiveness. She would enjoy that.

But first she would have to leave the island, wherever it happened to be.

The ship had been far from the mainland, so it stood to reason that she was on one of the many islands that dotted the area. Exactly how, she didn’t know. The last thing she remembered was sinking into the dark depths, and there certainly hadn’t been any land in sight.

Maybe something had picked her up and carried her? She had heard stories of shipwrecked sailors being brought to land by dolphins. But those had always been near the shores, and she had to have sunk deep.

She sighed. Well, maybe the merfolk had found her and brought her to safety! It made about as much sense as anything else.

Well, if she was on an island, then that could be a problem. Infinitely preferable to ending up as a drowned corpse to be picked clean by sharks or what have you, but that did mean that she was all alone, left to fend for herself with little hope of escape. There was the odd island that had things like settlements, forts, and plantations, but those were few and far between and tended to be closer to the mainland. This far out, the best she could hope for was a smuggler’s hideaway, and it was very unlikely that they would be sympathetic to her plight.

Nuriel swallowed. She had heard stories of the dark horrors that dwelt on the unexplored islands far out to sea: stories of savage tribes that dined upon human flesh, stories of wild animals unused to man and unwilling to tolerate having their territories trespassed upon, stories of hordes of insects that could pick a man’s bones clean in seconds, stories of giant plants with thorns that dripped with venom or flesh-hungry flowers that would trap any unwary passerby and dissolve their bodies in their acidic sap, stories of lonesome ghosts that would rip your soul from your body just to have a bit of companionship, stories of lumbering monsters that could swallow a lion whole.

She cast a dubious look at the thick jungle behind her. It looked like it could be holding any one of those horrors, or even all of them at once. There was a sizeable break in the trees that seemed to open to a path, which could mean any number of things. It could mean that she had been lucky enough to wash up somewhere with actual civilization and there was a township just down the road, but it could just as easily mean that cannibalistic marauders would be descending out of the jungle at any minute to skewer her on a spear and carry her off to be spit-roasted.

She shivered and quickly looked away. Now that was a line of thought that she didn’t care to entertain.

Still, regardless of where she was, the rules were still the same, even if the details had changed.

Learn all you can.

Don’t get caught.

Don’t get stupid.

Survive by any means necessary.

Nuriel yawned. Now that she at least had some food in her belly, everything was starting to catch up with her. Her eyelids were growing heavier with every blink, and those were happening with greater frequency. Her mouth split open with a cavernous yawn.

She violently shook her head. No, she couldn’t afford to drift off now. She was still out in the open, exposed to the elements and who knew what else. She had to find someplace safe, somewhere that the chittering water bugs couldn’t find her, maybe put some kind of shelter together, a lean-to at the very least, then she could…

Her eyes closed of their own accord.

When they opened again, she was still slumping up against the tree, looking out at the bay. However, the sun had fully set, the sky above was jet-black, and the stars were out and twinkling.

Nuriel abruptly sat straight up. How long had she been out? She hadn’t meant to drift off like that! Anything could have happened to her while she had been sleeping! Those bugs could have crawled back out of the sea and starting nibbling on her toes, jaguars could have come out of the jungle to gnaw on her guts, smugglers could have found her and carried her off for God alone knew what, or she could have-

Wait.

Why was the bay glowing?

Someone golden and glowing was creeping into the bay beneath the water, illuminating the surface. It slinked around the towering stone walls and started to make its way toward the shore.

Nuriel leapt her feet, her heartbeat hammering away in her ears like a warning drum.

The golden glow slowed to a stop right behind where the small waves rose up. From her vantage point Nuriel could see something gauzy and flowing in the light.

Suddenly the light went out, but the shapes remained, now as hazy shadows.

And then a face emerged from the water.

It was humanoid, but clearly not human. It looked like a young girl, one framed with silken black hair that seemed to melt into the water that hung in wet strands around a dark blue, heart-shaped face. Three dark stripes slashed across the bride of its nose, and its eyes glowed bright green.

The sea-creature locked eyes with Nuriel, and it smiled.

Its teeth were as sharp as a shark’s.

That did it. Nuriel turned and fled the beach, running through the break in the trees to be swallowed up by the jungle.


	2. Monsters

It’s sort of funny how fear can sometimes provide a shield against itself. In any other circumstance, Nuriel would never have dared rush into such a thick and wild jungle in the dead of night. That was just asking to end up as something’s midnight snack. But the shock of seeing that sea-creature emerge from the surf had put all of that out of her mind, and before she remembered what a bad idea running loudly and blindly was, she had already gone in far deeper than could be considered sane.

But remember she did, mainly when a deep, resonant roar echoed through the trees, one that stirred up the island’s nightlife and sent them hollering. Birds screeched, monkeys whooped and hollered, and things that Nuriel had never even heard before joined in with the yelping, growling, and…chirping, or something close to it. Nuriel immediately froze in place. The roar hadn’t come from behind her. Rather, it had come from…somewhere pretty far off, so there was that at least. And none of the animals taking part in the tumult sounded like they were nearby either.

Still, what in the Great Gassy Hell was that?! Nuriel had been to many different places and seen many strange and exotic animals. She had heard the vicious snarls of tigers; the deep, guttural bellows of bears; and the raspy growls of lions. But she had never heard anything like that. This seemed to combine elements of all three, but was so much louder, so much more powerful, like it had the rough edges shaved off and blasted through an elephant’s trumpet.

Slowly the clamor died down, leaving nothing but the odd bird call and the chirping of insects. Nuriel cast a fearful glanced over her shoulder, half expecting to meet the emerald gaze of the sea-creature.

The path had so far been fairly straight, wide, and clean, but even so she could not see the break in the trees that opened to the beach. In fact, she couldn’t see much of anything at all. Her eyes were adjusting to the dark, but even so they could barely make out anything other than vague silhouettes.

On the one hand, that meant that she hadn’t been followed. Good. Maybe the sea-creature really was bound to the water. On the other hand, she had kind of fled headlong into a dark jungle, one that was apparently packed with all kinds of savage wildlife.

Shit.

Nuriel glanced around. No, she still couldn’t make anything out. In fact, she had sort of gotten turned around and probably couldn’t find her way back to the beach even if she wanted to.

Grimacing, Nuriel took a hesitant step forward. She reached out with her hand, hoping to feel something that wouldn’t bite, claw, sting, lick, crush, or swallow her.

Her hands brushed against wood. A tree.

Nuriel patted around the tree’s trunk. It seemed pretty solid, but also plenty gnarled in that way jungle trees got. Maybe…

Gripping it with both hands, Nuriel pulled herself off the ground. Then she began to climb.

With as much time sneaking in and out of places as she did, Nuriel was quite the proficient climber, but even she found hoisting herself up a strange tree in utter darkness to be something of a challenge. She couldn’t see where her next handhold was going to be and just had to feel around until she found one, all the while praying that she wouldn’t disturb something’s nest.

 _Come on,_ she thought to herself. _Just a little further. Just a little further._

Then her hand came down on something smooth and hard.

Immediately her palm was filled with a frenzied fluttering. The shock almost caused her to lose her grip and fall, but she managed to hang on with one hand while ripping the other away from the thing whose rest she had disturbed. She heard the buzzing of its wings as it flew off.

Nuriel swallowed. Well, exceptionally large beetles were a thing here, and they seemed to be capable of flight. Lovely.

Though she really didn’t want to, Nuriel reached back for the tree again. This time she just felt familiar bark. Taking in a deep and shaky breath, she resumed her ascent.

Then the tree seemed to open up. Nuriel felt around to find that she had reached a sort of hollow formed in the base of several branches, one filled with a sort of springy moss. Also, there didn’t seem to be anything crawling, slithering, or biting around.

All right. That’ll do.

Nuriel gingerly eased herself around and laid back. It was large enough to fit her if she kept her legs close. And it was considerably better than wandering around down below in the dark. Not a whole lot better, but at the very least everything that could get her up in the branches could also get her down on the ground, so at least she was now safe from anything that could _only_ get her on the ground.

It wasn’t a very reassuring thought.

Still, she was sort of stuck at the moment, so there was nothing else to do but make herself comfortable and wait until first light. It promised to be a miserable time though. Her body was still shaking from her fright, and every nightcall sent her twitching. There was a bitter humor to it, in that when she hadn’t wanted to fall asleep earlier she had dropped off right away, but now that she would have preferred sleep to this watchful fear, there was no way she was going to be able to…

The darkness again swallowed her up.

…

_The ship is being buffeted by wind and rain from above and the rising and falling of the sea from below. Waves crash over the railings, sweeping across the deck and threatening to send the crew overboard. Every man has tied himself to whatever is available: to the masts, to the deck, to the railings, but that might not be enough. They all know that they very well might die that night._

_And none know that more than Nat the dumb cabin boy, real name Nuriel Cunningham, whom is currently behind held aloft by her slender neck by a thick, meaty hand. The hand belongs to Mr. Roderick Soil, the ship’s bos'n._

_Mr. Soil, a man heavy of muscle, large of belly, and bald of head, had always been a rough and calloused old cuss, an experienced sailor feared by all and who feared nothing in return. All of that salt and piss is gone now, and his striking blue eyes are wide with madness, the kind brought upon by terror._

_He holds Nuriel over the railing, her kicking legs dangling over the crashing sea. It is he that had discovered her secret. It is he that had dragged her up into the storm and exposed her true identity to the crew. It is he that now declares to all that the storm is her doing, that it is punishment for her deception, and if they wished to survive than they had to harden their hearts and remove the sin from their midst._

_Nuriel struggles and writhes in his grasp. If she could plea for her life she would have._

_Mr. Soil then releases his grip, letting her fall to her certain death in the waves below._

_Then suddenly, the view changes, and now Nuriel is observing the horrid drama from above. She is now a giantess standing waist-deep in the ocean, looking down at the tiny ship, its panicking crew little more than tiny dots rushing to and fro on the deck, and the storm itself is little more than an irritating wet breeze._

_Nuriel reaches down with one hand into the water and lifts the ship up. She brings it in close. Mr. Soil is still standing near the railing. She locks eyes with the tiny man, the one that had condemned her to die, and he freezes in terror._

_Then, just as he had done to her, she opens her hand, letting the ship and all aboard fall to its doom._

Nuriel’s eyes snapped open, the tinny screams of the men she had doomed in her dream still echoing in her mind.

What they saw was so odd that she wasn’t sure if she had even awakened.

She was still up in the tree, and the sun had yet to stir from its slumber, so there was nothing to see save shapes in the dark.

But there was a new shape, one that hadn’t been there when she had nodded off. One that was very close.

It was dangling over her, a vaguely bipedal form that clung to the branches with all the dexterity of a chimpanzee. Maybe it was one, though it looked a bit too graceful. Also, while it was nearly impossible to tell, Nuriel was pretty certain that it had long, flowing hair.

And it was staring down at her with two shining crimson eyes, ones that glowed as brightly as the green ones belonging to the sea-creature.

Maybe it was because she was still caught in the sleep trance, but Nuriel didn’t feel afraid or even worried. She merely stared right back at them, feeling nothing more than gentle curiosity.

The red-eyed shadow tilted its head. It blinked once.

Then the eyes slowly closed and the shadows shifted. A moment later it was gone.

Nuriel still kept staring at the place it had been. She wasn’t fully certain if she had actually locked gazes with another glowing-eyed creature or if it had been a lingering dream. Probably the second one.

Hopefully the second one.

Nuriel let her eyelids drift closed and she fell into a dreamless sleep.

…

When Nuriel again awoke, the sun was high and shining, and the dark shadows of the jungle were now an explosion of color. In fact, all she could see when her eyes opened was a confusing blur of greens, reds, yellows, browns, and purples.

Well, it would seem that she had survived the night. Nothing had eaten her while she had slept. She supposed that she ought to be grateful, but given that she presumably had many more nights ahead of her spent in this island, all it would take for was one second of carelessness, and that would be it for her.

Especially considered those strange creatures with glowing eyes that were apparently stalking her. Had those even been real? She was pretty sure that the green-eyed monster had real, but the one with red eyes might have actually just been a dream.

Even so, it was clear that there were dangers on the island unlike any she had ever even conceived, and she was going to have to be doubly careful if she wanted to survive to see another sunset.

Also, the ground was shaking.

Nuriel shook her head to dislodge the last vestiges of sleep. It did the trick of giving shape and substances to all the colors she was seeing but didn’t stop the shaking. That was real.

Then she heard an animal’s call, one that started as a deep, bass groan before rising up to a high whoop. And it came from directly below her.

Nuriel glanced this way and that. Then she pulled herself out of her mossy bed and crept to the edge to look.

What she saw dwarfed even both the green-eyed and red-eyed monsters for strangeness.

A herd of animals, about seven in all, was passing by on the forest path, but they weren’t at all like anything Nuriel had ever seen. For one, they were absolutely huge, four or five times bigger than even the biggest of horses, and while they didn’t stand as tall as the elephants she had seen, they had at least as much mass, if not more. Their brownish-grey bodies were rounded into ovals, their heads blunt, and they went along on four squat legs. They each had a long, swaying tail that stuck out behind them.

And their backs, tails, and the backs of their heads were all plated with thick, bony armor and jutting spikes. Crushing clubs of bone were stuck on the ends of their tails. One swing would smash her to bloody bits with ease. One of the tails brushed up against the trunk of Nuriel’s tree and sent the whole thing shaking. It had just been a chance impact, but that was all it took.

Nuriel felt the blood draining from her face. She wanted to cower back and hide, but she couldn’t tear her eyes away. No wonder the path was so wide, if those things were what traveled it! They could probably carve out another path just like it with a leisurely stroll through the woods!

Below, she saw a couple of babies waddling around the adults. Either one of them could have trampled her into a paste with ease.

She watched as they passed by her, on their way without knowing or caring about the strange, hairless trespasser that was watching them. And she kept on watching them until they had lumbered completely out of sight.

Nuriel fell back into her little nest, completely gobsmacked. Well, that certainly cleared up what kind of island she was on! If her glowing-eyed neighbors hadn’t already confirmed it, she had the ill fate to wash up on one of those monster-infested lost worlds of legend from the stories!

Hooray.

Nuriel was sorely tempted to simply stay right where she was. No need to expose herself to anything else that might be stomping around. Those big beasts could have walked right over her without so much as noticing. And if the grass-eaters were like that, imagine what the local predators must be like.

Then Nuriel remembered the echoing roar from the night before. Oh. Like that. The predators were like that.

Her mouth had gone dry. She swallowed and sloshed saliva around to moisten her lips. Then she crept over to look down again.

Nothing.

Well, now she had two choices: stay where she was or climb down and follow them. Nuriel wasn’t stupid, and she was very much in favor of survival. Father had taught her of the importance of keeping herself safe and out of sight, and she had taken his lessons to heart.

On the other hand, he had also taught her that nothing valuable was gained without risk, that knowledge was paramount to survival, and that staying in one place without seeing what was over the horizon was akin to rotting. Besides, she was going to have to learn her way around this strange new world if she wanted to keep her skin anyway.

Besides, she _really_ had to piss.

Nuriel breathed in through her nose and released it out of her mouth. All right then.

She stretched her legs out and brought them back in over and over, easing away the cramps from her tight sleep. Then she swung them down and began her descent.

As odd as it was, going down was almost as bad as going up. Sure, she had been blind and terrified and half-convinced that the next handhold would turn out to be a giant snake that would immediately squeeze the life out of her, but now that she could see what was around her, she realized that she was pretty far up. And it was much harder to find places for her feet and hands while going down.

Well, at least this time there wasn’t any enormous beetles to frighten her. Nuriel lowered herself nearly to the ground and let herself drop.

The beasts’ passing had beat the earth soft. Nuriel quickly scampered to a spot a fair distance from her tree and shimmied her trousers far down enough to squat and piss out a long, dark stream. The relief of it made her eyes roll back into her head. Oh, that had been saved up for a while.

That done, she yanked her trousers back up and returned to her tree. Looking up at its length, she wrinkled her nose in thought. The little nest she had up there was pretty convenient, and she was unlikely to find another on short notice. But if she left, it would be nearly impossible to find it again.

She looked around until she found a tall stick lying in the underbrush. Taking, she stuck it into the ground straight up right next to the tree’s trunk. There. Something she would easily notice but animals would probably ignore.

When she was finally done, she started down the path after the procession. Even as far as they had gone, she could still hear them lowing in the distance.

The path was fortunately pretty straight and clear. It would have to be for those behemoths to pass through. At one point she found a stream flowing across the road, but that wasn’t a problem as it wasn’t any deeper than her ankles. Plus, she now had a source of fresh water!

She moved a little off the path to where the stream was pouring off a rock and cupped her hands under the flow. Drinking in the water brought her almost as much pleasure and letting it out had. She had partaken her fair share of exotic vintages, mostly without their owners’ permission or knowledge, but this flowed more sweetly down her throat than any of the spirits she had pilfered.

Well, except maybe for _that_ one…

Nuriel finished quenching her thirst and continued on her way.

Now that she could see the jungle in the bright of day, it didn’t seem as threatening as it had the night before. Oh, it was certainly overgrown and wild, but it was actually quite lovely. There didn’t seem to be anything prowling

Up ahead there was a break in the trees, and beyond she could hear the armored beasts lowing contently. Though she hated the thought of actually using it for anything other than memories, Nuriel slid St. George from his sheath and made her way to the opening.

Now, Nuriel’s strangeness threshold had been gradually rising ever since she had woken up. It seemed that every minute spent on the island introduced her to something that put even the wildest of the sailor stories to shame.

But even so, what she saw then quite frankly defied even the most imaginative storyteller’s ability to describe.

Beyond was more than a clearing, it was a wide open field of grass and shrubs in greens and yellows, one large enough to contain a small village and its crops. Here and there a lonesome tree sprung up, almost in defiance of the expanse around them. The ground dipped gently down into a hillside from the jungle to a large lake at the bottom that was fed by a waterfall rushing down a cliffside.

And everywhere were monsters.

The family of armored beasts was nearby, contently grazing while the two babies chased each other around the adults’ legs. Another family group was further off, this one also of four-legged creatures that had longer legs, higher backs, but dark grey skin instead of spiked plates of bones. However, their heads were almost like helmets that flared up high into spiked crests in the back, with more spikes protruding around their eyes and from their noses. They looked like they probably couldn’t take as much damage as the first group, but they could certainly give out far more, especially with a running start. Things that looked like brown, horse-sized lizards walking around on two very long chicken-like legs strutted around, their bobbing heads balanced on long, flexible necks while their tails swayed behind them.

But it was down by the lake that the biggest of the monsters had gathered. There were several orangish beasts bigger than even the armored beasts, with longer legs and much thicker tails. They had mouths that looked like a duck’s bill and long, bony horns sticking out of the back of their heads. There were also somewhat smaller creatures with similar builds, but with dark green skin, parrot-like beaks, no horns, and a dangerous stabbing spike on each of their forelegs.

At any other time those would have been the sole focus of her attention, monsters of impossible height and girth. But she barely even noticed them, in favor of something else entirely.

Another…no, calling it a _monster_ just wasn’t right. It was too big for that, too awesome, too terrifying, too incredible to be debased with the simple label of _monster._ It was a _giant,_ a _behemoth,_ a _mountain_ that _walked._ It had an oval-shaped body with mottled grey skin larger than most houses and longer than most city streets! It had a supple, whiplike tail that stretched out longer than a full-sized schooner and walked along on four legs thicker than oak trees and taller than two full-grown men standing on each other’s shoulders.

And…

…and…and…and…

And its _neck!_ It just kept going and going and going, stretching out high above the ground, seemingly in defiance of gravity itself, impossibly long for how high it was. The round head at the end, though it was large enough to probably swallow her whole, seemed almost comically small by comparison. It was dipping its head down to scoop water into its mouth from the middle of the lake despite standing on the shore, behind the other beasts! Sometimes it would pause drinking and raise its head up and up and up to bite off bits of shrubs that were hanging off the side of the cliff.

That was what Nuriel saw, a creature too large to be real, one that dwarfed all attempts to describe it. Even as far as she was, she could feel the tremors through the earth as it walked, moving with far too much grace and fluidity than anything that size ought to be reasonably capable of.

And there were _four_ of them!

Nuriel’s legs wobbled beneath her. She took one unsteady step backward, lost her balance, and fell to her ass. She barely even noticed as she kept staring, her mouth agape.

How? _How?_ How could a place like this exist? How did nobody know about it? This island was _huge,_ and the things that lived upon it were sized up to fit! She had never heard of a place like this, with such freakish and powerful-looking creatures. And, sure, she had seen animals from other lands that were equally as strange, but she had at least heard of those before seeing them! These were wholly new, and they were much too big, and they was far too many of them, and _why didn’t anyone know about this?!_

Then she heard something snort.

Still on the ground with her legs splayed out around her, Nuriel turned to see one of the long-legged, long-necked lizards nearby. It was standing about four meters away, its head turned to one side to stare at her with a single bulging eye.

It turned its head around to look at her with the other eye and let out a hooting chirp. Whether it was a warning, an expression of curiosity, or a challenge Nuriel couldn’t tell. She was mostly focused on how easily the claws at the end of its feet could probably rend her flesh, if it didn’t decide to simply kick her head off.

Keeping their gazes locked, Nuriel slowly rose to her feet. The lizard raised its head in alarm and chirped again. This time, two more of the lizards took notice and turned to see what their companion was doing.

Making sure not to show it her back, Nuriel backed away, one careful step at a time. The important thing was to keep from running. Running might encourage it to give chase.

The lizard warily watched her as she backed away. Nuriel had to be close to the jungle entrance by now. Once she was in the trees she was probably going to be safe. She spared a glance over her shoulder to check the distance.

One of the baby armored beasts was _right there._

It came up to about her waist and was staring at her with a sort of stupid curiosity. If she had just kept backing up she would have walked right into it.

Nuriel froze. Oh, this was bad. What was she going to do?

The baby suddenly let out a happy cry and started waddling forward, no doubt to investigate this strange new visitor and see if it would be fun to play with. Nuriel suddenly found herself caught between the urge to flee in several different directions while realizing that they all were very bad ideas.

The baby shoved its snout right up against her and took a deep sniff. As it did, the chicken-lizard began striding forward. Nuriel held out a shaking hand, hoping that these things thought the same way that dogs did and it would accept the gesture as non-threatening.

The baby sniffed her hand. Its nose was dry and warm. Okay, good sign. At least it wasn’t-

Unfortunately, it seemed that the chicken-lizards had some kind of understanding with the walking armories, and the one that had been eyeing her took exception to her making contact with the baby. It raised its head up and let out a shrill cry.

This drew the attention of one of the adult armories, and it turned to see its young fraternizing with an unknown invader. It let out a hoarse bellow and began plodding toward her, moving far quicker than something that size had any business doing so. Nuriel turned and ran as fast as her legs would carry her.

…

For the second time in under a day, Nuriel fled through the jungle, heedless of how much noise she was making, not even trying to be stealthy. She was again driven by pure panic. The only difference was that this time she could see where she was going.

Unfortunately, that meant that everything else could see her.

After a bit, a stitch started to develop in her side, grinding her down, and she had to stop. Bracing her hand against a nearby tree trunk, she hunched over and panted heavily, her other hand holding onto her complaining side.

As she struggled to catch her breath, she heard the sound of rustling, of something heavy moving through the underbush.

Nuriel’s eyes were already closed, but her eyelids squeezed more tightly together. She just couldn’t catch a break, could she?

Wiping the sweat away from her face, Nuriel opened her eyes and peeked out from around the tree she was leaning again.

The section of jungle next to the path was more open, consisting of several widely-spaced birch trees with red-hued bark and red leaves, the ground carpeted by green ivy.

But as for the creature, there was nothing to be seen.

Nuriel scanned the area, searching for any sign of movement, any sign of-

There!

At the far end of the grove was a clustered of ferns with several feathery stalks. And they were swaying, as if by the wind, but there was no wind to be felt.

There was something in them, something around her size. Nuriel squinted her eyes and tilted her head. If she focused really hard, she could just make out the shape of something shaggy…

Then one of the feathery stalks withdrew, followed by another. Nuriel inhaled sharply. The stalks weren’t part of the foliage, they were _tails,_ the tails of several creatures hiding nearby.

Creatures that could probably see her better than she could see them.

To hell with that.

Nuriel again fled, slower this time and with a pronounced limp due to her side.

 _Where is it?_ she thought in despair. _Where’s that damn stick? Where is-_

There! The stick she had thrust into the ground was still sticking up out of the dirt, right next to her tree. Nuriel hastened up the tree with all the grace of an intoxicated monkey, ignoring her pain and fatigued, until she finally reached the safety of her hollow, into which she collapsed with her shaking arms and legs curled up close to her, praying to a God that she didn’t like that when she opened her eyes again, the nightmare would be over.

…

Nuriel was hungry.

She tried to ignore it. She shifted her position into something more comfortable, leaned back, and tried to think of something else.

She wasn’t sure how long she had been cowering in the tree. Hours? Minutes? Maybe even days. Maybe a whole week had passed as she had laid curled up and trembling. Maybe she had fallen asleep without realizing it. How would she be able to tell?

But she was hungry. She hadn’t been eating well even before being thrown overboard, and since then all she had been able to find to eat were those three coconuts from the day before. And now that the shock and terror had worn off, the emptiness of her belly was now demanding her attention.

_Food._

Forget it. There was no way that she was going back there. What good would finding food be if she ended up as something else’s meal?

_Food._

No! No food! She was going to stay up in the tree, where it was safe and nothing could find her!

Well, nothing except that red-eyed monster. Or angry primates. Or bugs. Or anything that could climb trees.

_Food._

_Enough!_ Nuriel covered her head with her arms and huddled down lower. She wasn’t leaving, and that was final.

And then she heard the sound of leaves rustling.

Nuriel stiffened. Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no…

The leaves continued to rustle, and with it was a low snuffling sound, punctuated by gruff snorts.

 _Please no,_ Nuriel thought. _Please._

Trembling hard, Nuriel peeked out from between her arms.

It was a good thing that her fear had frozen her ability to make noise, because otherwise she might have screamed.

Three wickedly sharp blades had reached up to her nest, each one more than a foot-and-a-half long and slightly curved. They felt around until they had hooked onto a leaf-covered branch, and then lowered, pulling the branch down. There was more snorting, and then the branch came up again, this time missing a large chunk of its leaves.

Nuriel whimpered. Those weren’t blades, they were _claws,_ ones longer than her forearms, each one capable of splitting her wide open with a single swipe! What good was her nest against something like that?

As Nuriel stared, the claws then reached up again to pull down another branch. Then she heard the same rustling sound to her right.

More claws were reaching up to the trees over there. Christ in Heaven, there was more than one of these things. She was probably surrounded.

Nuriel kept very, very still, listening and watching as the claws continuously came up and down, all the while silently begging for them to move on.

Then they extended all the way up over her nest, and reached in.

Nuriel instinctively kicked them with her legs.

The claws abruptly withdrew, and she heard something let out a hoarse, _“Haroof!”_ This was answered by several other grunts, and the claws stopped coming up.

Nuriel tensed up. Shit, she had given herself away. They were going to investigate, they were going to retaliate, they were going to come up for her, she was so completely fucked…

But instead, she heard the soft thuds as several heavy beasts lumbered away, ones that gradually got further and further away.

Nuriel blinked. Had she scared them off? Had they decided that whatever it was that was lashing out at them, it wasn’t worth the trouble?

_Please God, let them be gone._

When she was absolutely sure that they creatures had left, Nuriel finally untangled her limbs and got up to check.

The area around the tree was empty.

Nuriel breathed out a sigh of relief, but it was short-lived. Now that she knew that things lived her that could reach all the way up, her tree was no longer safe.

And she still needed to find food.

She backed out of her hideaway and climbed down to the ground. Then she stood still and listened.

No footsteps, no animal sounds coming from nearby, nothing to indicate that anything was close. Good.

Then again, if a stealthy predator was watching her from the shadows, she wouldn’t know until it had leapt onto her and started tearing out her intestines…

Nuriel roughly shook her head, banishing the thought. Then she looked at her possible paths.

She could go back to the beach and try to retrieve a few more coconuts. At least she knew for certain that something edible was waiting for her there.

But then, there was the problem of getting them out of the trees, and she couldn’t count on a convenient sea-bug to gift her with enough fright-induced climbing ability.

Plus, that direction led to a monster.

No. Not that way.

She also quickly discarded going in the opposite direction. The big animals grazing in the field might not be predatory, but that didn’t make them any less hazardous to her health, and they didn’t seem to care for trespassers. Besides, what food was she going to find there? Grass would fill her belly, sure, but she doubted that it would do her any good, though to be fair if this went on much longer she would be tempted to try.

Right then. That just left one road for her to take.

Swallowing hard, Nuriel pulled out St. George and stepped off the path and into the jungle.

As expected, it wasn’t easy going. The ground was largely uneven, and where it wasn’t covered with thick foliage, it was nearly swallowed up by a serpent’s nest of tree roots. She stuck to those parts. Tree roots might be a pain to walk upon, but at the very least they weren’t unlikely to poison her with a touch.

As she went, she kept an eye out for…pretty much anything. Fruit trees, wild vegetables, anything that she could eat. But she also kept her ears open for any sign of something that might want to eat her: snarls, growls, roars, anything down those lines, all the while trying not to think about the fact that when something did roar at her, it would be too late to do anything about it.

But then she did hear something, and it didn’t come from a predator.

Nuriel paused. She stood on a horse-sized root with one hand on the tree’s trunk and the other gripping St. George’s handle, ears open.

From nearby came the distinctive whooping of some kind of monkey, and from the sound of it there was a lot of them, and they didn’t sound stressed.

Nuriel considered her options. On the one hand, if there were monkeys about, they were probably near a food source, and anything a monkey could eat would be edible to a human, right?

On the other, a troupe of monkeys could tear her to pieces as easily as a jaguar. She would have to be cautious.

Nuriel followed the sound. The forest opened up into a grove of similar looking trees with wide canopies and yellow leaves. And in the branches were, as expected, monkeys.

They were lean of body and long of limb, with short silver-black fur and narrow snouts. They had long, slender tails that curled up over their backs in a spiral, and their eyes were an emerald green.

Nuriel paused. She didn’t exactly consider herself any kind of expert, but she had seen her fair share of monkeys. Even so, this particular breed was a new one.

Then again, there was a lot of that going around.

Of greater interest to her were the green-striped yellow orbs hanging from the trees. As she watched, several of the monkeys plucked them down and took great big bites. The fruits’ flesh was pale red and looked absolutely enticing.

Nuriel's mouth moistened as she gazed longingly at the fruit. Her stomach’s complaining suddenly flared up, insisting loudly that it be filled with those things over there, and to do it right _now._

There were a few of the fruits fallen to the forest floor. Many had big chunks bitten out or had been splattered by the fall, but she saw some that had survived the tumble intact. Keeping on eye on the monkeys, Nuriel took a hesitant step forward.

Then she heard a whoop of warning. Looking up, she saw one of the monkeys in the closest tree. It was crouching on one of the middle branches as it stared at her in curiosity.

Another whoop, and more monkeys came ambling to his tree to see what the fuss was all about.

Nuriel sighed. It was just like back at the field. Credit where it was due, the animals on this island were certainly wary of trouble.

Now the tree had a fair collection of wary primates, all of them focused on her. Nuriel slowly edged away, careful to not show them her back, all the while watching for their next move. The monkeys seemed…well, they were certainly curious. If she was the first human to reach this island, or at least make it this far into the jungle, then it was a safe bet that they had never seen anything like her before and were trying to figure her out.

However, they didn’t exactly look pleased to see her either. Many of them had bared their teeth and were hissing at her in warning, and more than one of them had plucked the yellow fruits from the branches and were holding them at the ready. That…made sense. It was obvious that this island was incredibly dangerous, so anything new was to be regarded with suspicion at best.

At least they weren’t charging her. Nuriel kept backing up until she was able to duck behind a tree. When she ascertained that they weren’t giving chase, she crouched down to consider the situation.

Most of the monkeys were still in that one tree, so maybe if she crept around…no, there were enough hanging around the other trees to spot her if she did that. In fact, it seemed that all of the monkeys that hadn’t immediately crowded into that single tree had spread out to the other trees along the grove’s perimeter. It was a smart defensive move, but it also complicated things.

Perhaps if she slowly approached without making any threatening moves, they would let her take a fruit or two. Nuriel sighed. And maybe she could strike up a conversation and establish a mutually beneficial bartering relationship. All right, put away the suicidal ideas. Yes, she was getting hungrier by the second, but…

Nuriel’s nostrils twitched. She heard buzzing. Glancing down, she saw that one of the fruits lying not far from her feet. It had splattered against the ground and gone rotten, attracting quite a few flies, so it wasn’t exactly fit for consumption (though to be honest, part of her was considering it), but it was there.

Now, how had it gotten all the way over there? She was far enough from the grove to rule out it falling to that spot naturally. There was no downhill slope steep enough to cause it to roll, and if it had fallen, it would have split apart on impact rather than all the way over here. Nuriel looked around. Sure enough, here and there lay more of the fruit, all of them spoiled and rotten, but still lying too far away from the grove.

Nuriel glanced out from around the tree. The monkeys were still there, watching to see if she’d come back.

And several were still had fruit in their grasp, ready to hurl at the first sign of a threat.

Nuriel got an idea. It was a risky idea, a dangerous idea, and some might consider it to be just as stupid as trying to unaggressive approach the monkeys, but she wasn’t blessed with a plethora of options.

Picking a number of stones off the ground, Nuriel walked back into view.

The monkeys immediately tensed up and started hopping up and down in the branches again. Nuriel took a few steps forward. The frantic hopping and hooting increased. Hairy arms were drawn back, hands firmly grasping their fleshy missiles.

However, Nuriel had some of her own. Palming one of the stones, she took aim at a spot free of monkeys, but close enough to make it clear that it was a deliberate attack. She drew back and threw.

The stone sailed off and bounced off the side of the tree.

That pissed them off. The monkeys began outright screaming. Nuriel readied herself to run, but they didn’t leave the tree. However, those bearing fruit did draw back a bit further.

So Nuriel threw another rock at them.

Finally they began to return fire. Several yellow orbs came hurtling her way. Nuriel dove out of the way and took cover.

It had worked! Sure, many of the fruits splattered upon impact with a tree trunk, a rock, or the ground, but several survived the throw to land fully intact. Nuriel scampered out and began gathering those up.

The monkey were still whooping angrily at her, and she couldn’t help but grin. Here she was, washed up on a dangerous and savage land full of monsters, and she was already outsmarting the local animals. No wonder that man was the dominant species on Earth. Hell, if she managed to survive long enough to find consistent shelter and a food source, she might have to get to work taming some of those-

Then something smacked against her face and sent her sprawling.

The world pitched and heaved as violently as the _Santa Lillian’s_ deck the day before. Nuriel blinked away the spots in her vision. Right, she had taken a hit. Not the first time, nor would it be the last. Time to regather her wits and get out of range before-

Another fruit slammed into her buttocks.

 _That_ did the job of waking her up. Nuriel hastily clawed her way to her feet. She seized up St. George, gathered as many of the fruits as she could, and finally fled, as the victors continued to scream at her and fill the air with delicious ordinance in her wake.

…

The fruits didn’t have much in the way of juice when compared to their cousins in more civilized areas, and their seeds were large enough to be annoying.

Nuriel quite frankly did not care. Taste had never mattered to her anyway. She ripped them open with St. George and gulped them down in chunks, pausing only to spit the seeds out.

When she was done, she was still hungry, but did feel at least a little better. Unfortunately, she now had a new problem.

In finding the grove and fleeing the monkeys, she had turned herself around so completely that there was no way she was going to be able to find her way back to the path and her tree. Which was just as well, as it was not at all sufficient as a long-term shelter. Still, it did work as a temporary home base, and she was going to have to find another before it got dark.

Sighing, Nuriel set off.

Despite the shade of the canopy, the day soon grew hot, and while the fruits had been pretty dry, she had still gotten a fair bit of juice over her chin, arms, and shirt, which the heat was now drying into a sticky film. That was uncomfortable enough, but when it started to attract flies it became unbearable.

Nuriel swatted them away, but the cloud of crawling legs just kept growing.

Water. She had to find water and wash it all off of her. Nuriel increased her gait, slapping at whatever exposed skin she had, but the swarm was not to be deterred.

This was bad. The buzzing insects were annoying, but if they started biting, then they were potentially lethal. There were many tropical diseases in the Caribbean islands spread by biting insects, and dying of those was so much worse than even being eaten alive. And if enough bugs targeted her, then she would suffer both.

Nuriel broke out into a run, waving her arms around her head, trying to drive the flies away, trying to escape, but they just wouldn’t let up.

Then, as she sprinted across the top of a slope, the ground beneath her feet suddenly shifted. Her legs slipped out from under her, and she fell.

The next few moments were a terrifying blur as she tumbled down a steep hillside. Fortunately, untold years of rotting leaves at the bottom formed a nice blanket for her to land in. In fact, it was almost comfortable.

Unfortunately, that same squishy blanket also made for an excellent home for several creatures that Nuriel would have been happy to never disturb.

Nuriel’s senses returned to her in degrees. The first thing she became aware of was that she was lying in something soft and wet. The second was that despite her sudden tumble, she seemed to be unhurt. The third was that, for whatever reason, the flies had neglected to follow her down, so there was that at least.

The fourth was that something slimy was making its way across her arm.

Nuriel leapt to her feet. A huge, green-bodied slug was crawling over her right forearm. She hastily yanked it off and hurled it away.

Something slithered onto the nape of her neck. Nuriel yelped and hurled that slug away as well. She hastily hopped out of the pile of rotting leaves until she found ground that was reasonably solid.

Nuriel hastily searched herself all over. No slugs, no slugs, all right. Good. They were gone. They were gone, and…

Her gaze then lifted to take in the hill she had just fallen down.

It was steep, but not unclimbable. In fact, further down the way the slope evened out enough to make ascending an easy matter! And further along…

Nuriel’s heart skipped a beat.

There was a building nearby.

It was about half again as large as a mercantile booth, the likes of which were often seen at city docks, and was square in shape. It was entirely made of grey hewn stones, with an open rectangular window in the wall facing her and another in the one across from it. The roof was pyramidal, formed by four tiers of stone bricks with the broken remains of some kind of statue at the center.

The structure was clearly manmade, and it was very, very old. The stones still stood, but they had been worn rough by the elements and now were home to several patches of moss. Nuriel couldn’t see much in its shadowed interior, but there seemed to be quite a lot of rubbish, mainly decaying leaves and other similar mulch.

Nuriel cocked her head in thought. Well, maybe she wasn’t the first human to set foot on this island after all. It seemed that people had lived here, though whether this was evidence of some long-lost civilization or if it was simply an abandoned building and its owners were still thriving somewhere else was up in the air. And honestly, Nuriel wasn’t sure which possibility she preferred.

She slowly walked up to the building and peered in through the window. She couldn’t see much other than dead leaves. Then she slowly made her way around its perimeter. The next wall to her right had no entrance at all, neither window nor doorway, so she was about to pass it by.

Then she stopped. There were things carved into the stone, relief images of some kind. Time and exposure had worn most of them away, but she could make out a few details. She thought she could see a representation of one of the horned beasts with the helmeted heads and the high backs. There were a few symbols that she didn’t recognize, as well as what looked like several people standing in a row near the bottom.

And hovering over them was a head of some kind of animal, a head with a long snout similar to a particularly thick horse, one with a wide mouth and a great many sharp teeth.

It looked like a dragon.

Nuriel swallowed. Well, actual dragons were no less far-fetched than anything else she had seen, so if any were actually present, she really, really hoped that the tales of their preference for the flesh of young maidens had been exaggerated. St. George told the tale of the slaying of a dragon, but he would be greatly inadequate in replicating the feat.

Shivering, Nuriel continued her inspection of the building. The window on the other wall didn’t tell her much more than the first had. However, the final wall had a proper doorway, a rectangular opening large enough to accomondate a full-grown man.

Nuriel stood at the doorway and peered inside. There was no thought of actually using this structure as her new home. It was entirely too exposed, its placement at the bottom of a hill left her open to all sorts of bad, and she wasn’t about to risk waking up every morning covered with slugs. Still, she was very curious about its purpose, and if one existed, it stood to reason that there might be more, maybe one in a more ideal location.

There didn’t seem to be much inside though. From the look of things, the far wall, the one without any window or door, contained some kind of alcove, perhaps a small fireplace. And there did seem to be stone benches under each of the windows. Maybe this had been a guard shack or an outpost of some kind.

Then, as she shifted her position, something partially buried in the leaves caught the sunlight and glinted.

Nuriel blinked. Had…had that been _gold?_

It glinted again. Whatever it was, it was definitely metal. Nuriel got in closer and crouched down to get a closer look.

Her heart started beating faster. It was gold all right, some kind of bracelet from the look of things. And she was pretty sure it was set with some kind of blue stones, right under the covering of leaves.

Nuriel started to grin. Maybe it was St. George’s influence, maybe it was all the pirates she tended to sail with, maybe it was Father’s lessons, but she did have a attraction to all things shiny and valuable. And sure, maybe a jewel-encrusted gold bracelet wouldn’t do her any good, but hey, if she survived it stood to reason that she would one day find a way off the island. It wouldn’t hurt to take along something that could a few coins in her pocket.

Nuriel reached over grab onto the bracelet and pull it free.

It came up, and it brought a human bone with it.

Nuriel hastily dropped the bracelet and leapt back. The sudden motion caused the pile of leaves to shift, revealing the leering eye sockets of a human skull.

Oh no. Oh no, no, no.

Now that she was really looking, she could see the shape of the rest of the skeleton, its slime-covered forearms sticking out from the leaves, while cracked and snapped rib bones, vertebrae, and leg bones were strewn about outside of the pile, no doubt the work of local scavengers going for the marrow.

Nuriel’s heart was still pounding, and this time it wasn’t from anticipation. She didn’t buy into many of the superstitions spread around the sailors and brigands she ended up spending most of her time with, especially now that one of those beliefs had nearly gotten her killed. She had been on plenty of voyages in which no storms had risen up in protest to the presence of a girl on board, and no one had been more the wiser. In her opinion, fearful men will always invent a reason to blame their own

But that didn’t mean she didn’t have a healthy respect for forces well beyond mortal understanding. In her opinion, nothing good could come from upsetting those from the world beyond, and she did what she could to avoid attracting their attention. She didn’t rob churches or the clergy, she avoided places of sin and indulgence, and she kept her distance from cemeteries, crypts, and other houses of the dead. Luck might be a myth used by the weak-willed as an excuse for their own failings, but ghosts? Monsters? Malevolent spirits? Oh, those she had no problem believing in.

And for good reason.

Father had not held to the belief that the places where the dead slept were to be avoided. In fact, he had often said that others’ irrational fear of ghosts and spirits made them a prime hideaway in a pinch, as well as a great place to meet with certain…business associates that wished to avoid scrutiny.

But one night, all that had changed.

Father had left Nuriel in the tiny attic room that had served as their home at the time, impressing upon her to lay low and wait for him to return, that he was going to the cemetery to sell off a few pilfered items to a prospective buyer. And as such instances were common, Nuriel hadn’t thought much of it.

But then he had returned much, much earlier than normal, and rather than come bearing a pouch of coins, he had returned empty-handed. What was more, he had been _terrified._ His face had been utterly pale, and he would not stop shaking.

 _We need to leave,_ he had told her. _Right now._

Nuriel had tried to ask why, but he wouldn’t hear it. He had only told her to gather anything she could carry, keep quiet, keep her head down, and follow him.

It hadn’t been the first time Father had led her in a hurry through the city after something had gone wrong, but she could not remember an instance before or after when he had looked so scared while doing so: always starting at every sudden sound, always glancing over his shoulder and at the foggy night sky, and, strangest of all, avoiding the shadows and staying where it was lit, the opposite of what he normally did during an escape.

And though she had obeyed and kept quiet, Nuriel had also been unable to shake the feeling that they were constantly being watched, that something _was_ lurking in the shadows, stalking them every step.

A few days later, when things had calmed down and Father had seemed to regain some of his wits, he had finally told her what he had seen: that the deal had been a trap, and that the buyer had not been interested in the merchandise at all. Instead, the buyer had been interested in _him._

 _He didn’t say anything,_ Father had told her. _I just knew from the way he looked at me, with those dead eyes. That bastard. He wasn’t human. I don’t know what he was, but he wasn’t human._

Nuriel still hadn’t understood, but she took Father at his word, and ever since then, even after Father had been taken from her, she had avoided the houses of the dead, lest she also encounter something that looked human but wasn’t, something with dead eyes.

And if for no other reason to confirm her fears, the skull started moving.

Something was inside it, something black and…writhing. A slender black limb reached out of the eye socket, one about as long as her hand, fingers included. It was followed by another, and then another, and then another.

Nuriel stood in abject horror as the largest and blackest spider she had ever seen crawled out of the skull and slowly made its way over the mess of rot and decay.

Horrific intuition struck her, and Nuriel slowly looked up, focusing on the structure’s walls. Most of them were still bathed in shadow, but now that she was paying attention, she could see movement.

A lot of movement.

Then, though she really, _really_ didn’t want to, Nuriel looked up.

The shadows of the ceiling and the upper parts of the walls were moving, were writhing, were moving towards her. There had to be hundreds of spiders living in the stone structure, some of them tiny little monsters the side of her pinky nail, while others were as large as her fist. They crawled over one another in that horrible, stiff-legged manner of spiders, which always seemed so alien, so unnatural.

And what was more, they were all crawling toward her.

Oh, _fuck_ this!

Nuriel turned and ran as fast as her legs would take her. All thought of stealth and not attracting predators was gone. Now all she wanted to do was put as much distance between herself and that spider-infested and probably haunted _tomb_ as possible.


	3. Carmilla's Fancy

For once luck was with Nuriel, or at least the poor fortune that had been dogging her for days had decided that nearly walking into a tomb infested with giant spiders was enough for now and gave her a bit of a break, in that despite running blindly through the jungle with little thought to stealth and awareness of her surroundings, she didn’t encounter anything trying to eat her, smash her, or infect her with something exotic and horrible.

When enough of her senses returned to her to at least take stock of herself, she was standing in a part more brightly lit than most, due to the trees overhead not being as thick so as to blot out the light. Where she was in relation to the tomb, the grove, the path, or the field, she couldn’t even begin to judge. But her heart was still pounding, her hands were shaking, and she was jumping at every sudden noise.

Nuriel anxiously looked around. No, nothing was stalking her, nothing was crawling toward her, nothing was crawling _on-_

Wait.

The second the thought entered her mind, Nuriel frantically slapped herself all over, searching for any disgusting stowaway that might have picked up a ride. It took searching herself twice over before she was convinced that there was no spiders clinging to her ass or slugs crawling up her legs.

All right.

Nuriel slowly inhaled through her nose and exhaled out her mouth over and over. She was safe. She was good. She had gotten away.

She stood there, still and alone, staring off into space.

Then she began to shake. It started small, just a tiny trembling of the fingers, but from there it spread to her wrists, up her arms, and from her shoulders it went both down and up, until her whole body was shaking.

 _Don’t scream,_ said that small voice of rationality, the one that always became the most insistent whenever she was in trouble, which was often. _Let it out if you must, but do so_ quietly!

She listened. She bit back on the shriek she felt forming, clenching her jaw tight and refusing to let it out.

But she did everything else though.

Her vision misted over, and she attacked everything that was near, kicking tree trunks and pounding the ground with her fists. She tore up ferns with ripped them to pieces. She slammed her knuckles into a large boulder until the skin threatened to break.

From there, she grabbed up everything she could get her hands on, from stones to leaves to handfuls of dirt, and threw them as hard as she could. She did everything she could to channel her rage out while making as little noise as possible.

And why shouldn’t she rage? Everything about her current situation was completely and absolutely unfair! Sure, she was a thief and a bit of a liar, but that didn’t mean she deserved to be blamed for a hurricane and thrown overboard to drown, end up marooned on an island full of monsters, get attacked by bugs at every turn, and now have to deal with vengeful ghosts! It wasn’t right at all!

In time her anger burned itself out, leaving her feeling drained, but just a little bit better. After all, she was still alive. Nothing had eaten her yet, she had suffered no serious injury, nothing had really focused on her yet. She was, for the time being, all right. She just needed to keep her head on and her wits about her.

Nuriel slowly breathed out. Fine. She was fine. She could do this.

Then, as she continued to calm down, another piece of good fortune made itself known to her. She heard the distinctive trickle of water coming from somewhere nearby.

Heartened by this, Nuriel followed the sound until she came across a small creek running through the trees. She almost dove right at it, only for a sharp memory to force itself into the forefront of her mind.

A deal had gone south, and she and Father had had to flee the city for a time, taking refuge in the woods. And nearly a solid day of walking, Nuriel had been hot, tired, and thirsty, and upon finally coming across a small stream much like the one she just found, she had darted for it just like she was now.

Only that time, Father had seized her by the bicep and roughly yanked her back.

 _Are you mad?_ he had demanded. _Do you_ want _to be heaving your guts out? That little trickle’s flowing so slow, and you could piss in it a mile away, and it would still flow back into your greedy tongue!_

That had stunned her. Sure, the water from the canals in the city were filthy, but this had been out in the wild! Surely the water had to be clean out there!

But when he had calmed himself some, Father had explained that small, slow-flowing streams moving through the dirt and mud were likely to be full of animal shit and pieces of animal carcasses and whatever else they picked up. Larger, faster rivers were better, and water that flowed through and off rocks was the best, which did come to make sense once Nuriel had thought on it some.

Nuriel followed the creek. It seemed to be getting bigger. Soon the green-covered soil gave way to rocky ground, and other creeks were running in to feed the main channel, turning it into a proper river.

What was more, she could hear the sound of a waterfall up ahead.

Now it should be safe enough to drink. Nuriel knelt down next to a large stone that divided part of the river into two, cupped her hands to catch the water flowing across it, and drank. Once her thirst was finally quenched, she began rubbing the water all over her, essentially giving herself a quick whore’s bath to wash off the film of dried juice and sweat.

When she was done, she felt a whole lot better. Sure, those fruits hadn’t exactly stuffed her, but they were something at least, and where there was one kind of fruit there was probably more somewhere about. And now the flies would leave her alone at least. And hey, the spiders hadn’t gotten her! That was a definite point in her favor.

As Nuriel rose up, her gaze fell upon a relatively gentle pool that sat near her feet.

Her reflection stared up back at her.

It had been a long time since Nuriel had seen her own face. The last port she had taken ship hadn’t left her much time for anything of the nature. She had just enough time to pawn what meager findings she had managed to scrape together, get herself a meal, pick a few pockets, and find a new ship to set sail on.

But now…she looked different from what she remembered. Her pale woolen hair, normally cut short so as to make passing as a boy easier, was now past her jawline, while her freckled elfin face was thinning out, the baby fat in her cheeks disappearing.

Nuriel sighed. She was getting older. In times past stowing away in a ship or passing as a boy had been so easy. She just had to find a ship looking for a cabin boy and join the crew. Then she would have a designated place to sleep, semi-regular food, and didn’t have to worry about being caught. Granted, she would sometimes find herself having to ward off members of the crew who were growing lonely at sea and frankly didn’t care about her sex, but she had learned a trick or two to quickly divest them of those notions when it happened.

But lately it was just getting more and more difficult. It didn’t matter that she was binding her chest, it didn’t matter that she was cutting her hair and dressing up in man’s clothes, it didn’t matter that she had no voice to give herself away, they were starting to notice more and more. If she kept growing, even that would be a problem, as she wouldn’t be able to fit into the same spaces that she used to. She had always been small for her age, but that only went so far.

Then Nuriel glanced up. Well, at the very least she didn’t need to worry about any of that here. The locals didn’t care what was between her legs; they would eat her just the same. It was kind of refreshing in macabre sort of way.

Furthermore, there was one other thing she no longer had to do.

Nuriel unbuttoned her shirt, starting from the top and working her way down. Then she shrugged it off her shoulders and carefully laid it on a rock. Now with her shoulders and stomach bare, she knelt down to yank out St. George and used him to slice the strips of linen she had used to kept her bosom bound.

Her breasts had never been much to speak of, and honestly, given how baggy her shirt was, she probably didn’t even need to bind them down, but it didn’t pay to take chances. Still, she felt a measure of relief once they were freed. If there was one advantage to being marooned on an island of monsters and ghosts, it was that she no longer had to care much about societal conventions. The monsters didn’t care if she was a boy or a girl; they would eat her much the same.

It wasn’t much of a relief, but she would take what she could get.

As she straightened up, she glanced around and saw nothing. Then she looked back down at the stream and shrugged. Oh, what the hell.

She untied and pulled off her boots. Then she undid the ties of her trousers, stuck her thumbs into the waistline, and shimmied them down her waist and stepped out of the legs.

Now as naked as everything else on the island, Nuriel stepped into the shallows of the pool and knelt down. It made for a poor bath, but she was able to scoop water up with her hands and clean off the worst of the sweat and dust. Bathing was never very high on her list of priorities, and she didn’t get many opportunities to clean up, but she wasn’t one to snub the chance when it came by.

When she stepped out of the pool again, she felt even better. At the very least those flies might leave her alone now. She dressed again, finishing up by sliding St. George back into his home and stuffing the strips of linen into the back of her trousers, just in case if a situation came up that needed something wrapped. Then she headed off again.

There was a break in the foliage coming up. Nuriel sidled up to the last tree before the boundary and concealed herself. She listened for any sign of one of those animals, but could hear nothing more than falling water. Then she peeked out. There was no sign of movement beyond the last of the fronds.

Satisfied that she was alone, Nuriel stepped out of the jungle.

Beyond, she found herself standing on a jutting triangular shelf of rock that had thrust herself up over a steep cliffside. The river ran all the way across to pour off of the tip down into a lagoon far below.

A lagoon that drained out into the sea.

She had come to one of the island’s borders. Here, it was divided into a labyrinth of smaller islands and peninsulas, connected by natural stone bridges with their bottoms worn away and separated by shallow green water. The place was lush with vegetation, and Nuriel could see several of the strange animals moving around, though these were considerably smaller than most of the ones back at the field.

Furthermore, she was pretty sure she saw the mast of a ship, poking over the hills near the far shore.

Nuriel’s breath caught in her throat. If there was a mast, then that meant that someone had come ashore, perhaps merchants stopping to water and search for provisions before setting off again! Maybe even the Royal Navy! They surely would have no problem giving a poor, stranded girl a lift, would they?

Then again, it could be smugglers, or something even worse, like pirates. She wasn’t exactly having much luck with those sorts.

Still, it was worth exploring. Nuriel looked around until she saw that the cliff merged into a nearby hillside that would take her down to the lagoon. And from the lagoon, she ought to reach where the ship sat anchored.

Nuriel hurried over to the hill and began her descent. At first it was steep going down a grassy slope, and she had to sit on her ass and scoot her way down to avoid slipping. But then it evened out enough, allowing her to stand again.

Soon after, the ground straightened out into a wide shelf covered with grass and a few scattered trees nestled between two high walls of rocks. Beyond that was a short drop-off onto another shelf, which led to another, and another, all the way down to the ground. Nuriel ran to the edge and lowered herself down.

As she readied herself to run to the next ledge, a gruff snort told her that she ought to have been paying greater attention.

Nuriel froze. Swallowing, she slowly turned her head.

Standing nearby was one of the monsters. This one was closest to those chicken-legged, long-necked lizard things, in that it was roughly the same size and stood on two feet, with its arms held close to its chest and was balanced by a fleshy tail sticking out the back. Its rough skin was covered with dark brown scales. However, that was where the similarities ended.

Most of the creature’s body, when compared to the long-necked lizard, was both shorter and thicker, from its stumpy, yet powerful looking legs, to its meaty tail, to its normal-sized but heavily muscled neck. Its head was much larger, with two green eyes on either side and a stubby horn on its snout.

And the top of its head was taken up by a thick dome of bone, surrounded by spikes. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what _that_ was for.

The dome-head rose up and croaked at her in agitation. It clearly wasn’t happy that she was here on its shelf, and it wanted her gone.

Well, Nuriel was more than happy to comply, but given that this thing seemed made for short bursts of acceleration, she didn’t trust it to not charge the second she showed her back.

When Nuriel didn’t immediately flee, the dome-head then lowered its head, lining up its neck, spine, and tail in a straight line right to the dome. One foot tipped with thick, blunt claws pawed at the ground.

Oh shit.

With one last gruff cry, the dome-head charged. Nuriel leapt to the side, barely missing having her chest caved in.

The dome-head kept going right past where she had been standing to slam into the thick trunk of a sturdy-looking tree. The whole of the tree shook upon impact, and it was forced noticeably a few inches forward.

Nuriel gulped.

Despite the knock it had taken, the dome-head seemed none the worse for the wear. It backed up, shook its head, and turned around to face her again. It bellowed again.

Nuriel took off, legs pumping as fast as possible, desperately focused on the nearby ledge. If she could just reach that, then maybe she’d be safe.

Behind her, the dome-head charged again, the gruffness of its growls and snorts coming closer alarmingly fast.

 _Faster, faster, faster,_ Nuriel’s mind begged her legs. _Must go faster, must go faster, must go faster-_

She was at the ledge! With no other choice, Nuriel took a flying leap, all the while praying that the drop on the other side wasn’t too high.

As it turned out, it wasn’t high enough to be lethal, but still higher than she would have liked. The ground rushed up to meet her, and she landed hard on her side, forcing a pained gasp from her lungs.

For a few seconds Nuriel lay stunned on her side, convinced that in her desperation to escape getting smashed to pieces she had ended up smashing herself. She was almost afraid to move, for fear of finding herself full of broken bones.

But she had to move. Grunting, she rolled over onto her back and made a quick self-examination.

Well, her side was throbbing, especially her hip, but nothing _seemed_ to be broken. That was fortunate, though she really needed to stop dropping from various heights, as sooner or later her rash of bad luck would take notice and start interfering with that as well.

Then, as she gingerly sat up, she heard a hoarse growl of annoyance.

Nuriel looked up. The dome-head was peering over the ledge down at her. It chuffed and growled, but it didn’t follow. Apparently it was just too steep and too tall for it to risk, so it had to content itself with glowering.

Nuriel glowered right back. Then she shot it a rude gesture and stomped off, leaving it to bellow impotently at her.

The rest of the descent wasn’t nearly so eventful. The bruise on her hip slowed her down some, but she had dealt with worse, and soon she had touched down onto the soft sands at the bottom.

Nuriel took a moment to catch her breath. She checked to see if the mast was still visible. It was, but she couldn’t hear any sign of the crew, no voices in conversation and no sound of them going about their work.

Frowning, Nuriel slowly made her way around the bank of sand, sometimes sloshing through warm, shallow water from one bank to the next, keeping the mast in sight. As it grew closer and its condition became apparent, her heart started to fall.

Finally she turned the final corner, and all hope died.

It was just as she had feared. The ship was a wreck, beached on one of the many sub-islands that made up the tropical labyrinth and long abandoned by its crew. It seemed to be a brig, a smaller sized vessel favored for their speed and maneuverability. This one had apparently been privately owned, if the custom ornate trimmings were any indication. Nuriel tended to avoid them, as smaller craft made it harder to divert attention, but she had seen many of its like in ports. However, they had all been in much better condition than this. Though the hull seemed mostly intact, it was still battered and cracked, the sails torn from the mast, and the railings in ruinous condition. It clearly had sailed its last voyage.

However, there were two things that quite frankly did not make any sense at all. For one, the island it had run aground upon was well within the chain, a fair distance and several other chunks of land between it and the ocean. For it to have gotten this far in, the crew would have had to have navigated the network of natural canals, which didn’t make much sense at all. Why hadn’t they simply laid anchor on the outside and trekked in by foot, or at least come in by rowboat?

The second was that the ship wasn’t actually aground, but rather…atree. To be specific, it had somehow gotten thrust up into the branches of several beech trees, which were now growing around its hull, forming a sort of vise that locked it in.

Now, how in the hell had that happened? Had some great sea giant plucked it from the water and thrown it, like she had to the _Santa Lillian_ in her dream the previous night? It made about as much sense as anything else she had seen so far. Or had it been carried off by a massive storm, hurled over the surrounding bits of land by a monster wave? For a wave to throw a ship that size that far, she honestly had a better time believing the sea giant theory.

That having been said, while the ship clearly wasn’t going to provide her with a means of escape, that didn’t mean it was useless. In fact, the more she thought about it, the more it seemed to be ideal as a sanctuary. It was far enough from the main island to keep all but the most adventurous of the monsters away, it was held high enough to deter those from that latter category, spiders weren’t likely to be nesting this far from the jungle, there was a fresh water source within walking distance, there was probably several food sources nearby as well, and it would shield her from the worst of the elements.

Hmmm.

Nuriel walked over to the beech trees and looked the situation over with a critical eye. From there, she could see the words _Carmilla’s Fancy_ (whoever that was) inscribed in gilded letters on the ship’s side, but more to the point, she could also tell that the trees were climbable. She spat in both palms, rubbed them together, and set to work, leaping up to grab onto the lower branch, hoisting herself up, and ascending up to reach the ship itself.

She paused as she reached the cannon ports, which were all snugly sealed up. That might actually be a good sign, as it meant fewer places for local critters to crawl in. If the wreck turned out to be monster-free, then it might make for an ideal hideaway so long as she was trapped on the island.

Finally she reached the deck. She hauled herself up and stood up straight. The boards creaked a bit, but they had been made to last, so they held.

In fact, while it was clear that the ship had taken a beating, it did seem to be in pretty good shape. It might even still have been seaworthy, with the main problem just being how to get it out of the damned trees and back into the water. Granted, even if she did have the means, Nuriel wasn’t about to test that theory without a very close and very thorough examination, but it was good news.

Then she looked down the deck sternward, toward the captain’s quarters.

One of the two wooden doors lay open.

Nuriel frowned. Well, after they had found themselves stuck, the crew had probably just taken what they could use and abandoned the ship. There would be no need to close and lock everything up, right?

But why abandon the ship at all? Why not work to get it down? If there had been a full crew, they could have probably worked something out with ropes, saws, and whatever tools they had on hand, and the ship would provide better shelter than anything else until the task was done. Why leave at all? There didn’t seem to be any reason to.

Unless they had been chased out.

Nuriel swallowed. She pulled out St. George and cautiously made her way across the deck, headed toward the door. In the dying light it had a rather eerie look, like the open mouth of a slumbering monster. In all the stories that Father had told her, the monster always made their homes with ominous entrances.

Nuriel reached the door. She lifted her hand to push aside the one that was still closed, but then hesitated.

It hadn’t been too long ago that she had disturbed human remains. What if it happened again? What if she found the corpses of the crew inside, maybe even the captain himself? Ghost ships were nothing to fuck with, and if she ended up angering their spirits, then she was probably going to wish that those animals had trampled her that morning.

Swallowing, Nuriel glanced inside. The sun was setting behind the _Carmilla’s Fancy,_ so there wasn’t much light getting in through the door that was open. She couldn’t make much out besides what looked like to be a leaning table with a broken leg.

Nuriel closed her eyes for a moment, took a deep breath, and shoved the remaining door open with her shoulder.

As expected, the room beyond was a wreck. She could see the remains of smashed barrels, destroyed furniture, and unidentifiable rubbish. It also smelled quite awful, a thick, musky scent that reminded her a little of chicken coops, only so, so, so much worse.

She took a step inside.

Something cracked under her foot.

Turning her foot, she saw the what looked like the leg bone of some kind of small animal. It was shattered, but not by her boot. Actually, it looked like something had already ripped it apart.

Oh no.

Then something let out a cackling cry of warning. One of the shadows moved, and Nuriel found herself locking gazes with a pair of luminescent golden eyes.

A moment later Nuriel found herself tumbling backward as a musty, feathery, shrieking _something_ threw itself at her. It hit her full in the chest and sent her sprawling back onto the deck.

Chaos enveloped Nuriel’s world. Her vision was taken up by nothing but swirling grey feathers. Cackling shrieks filled her ears, while sharp blades swiped at her clothing, trying to reach the soft flesh beneath. Gasping with fear, tried to push the thing off, but it dug in its claws and stayed put. White-hot pain erupted where her flesh was punctured.

In pure desperation, Nuriel shoved her forearm up against the thing’s throat and pushed back. Her vision cleared, and she saw herself facing the most terrifying bird she had ever seen. It was an ugly thing, with feathers the color of both old iron and fresh blood, its murderous eyes bright yellow, and its beak long and…

Toothed.

The fucking bird had _teeth!_

One hand still wrapped in a death-grip around St. George’s handle, Nuriel quickly scrambled to her feet. The bird was now perched on the deck railing, wings outstretched as it cackled angrily at her.

It was an ugly thing all right, though surprisingly not as large as it had first seemed, barely larger than a raven in fact. But that didn’t make it any less scary. It seemed to be an unholy amalgamation of bird and lizard, with three sharp little claws extending out of the bend of its wings; scales around its eyes and talons; and a long, stiff tail. Both of its legs were covered with wide feathers, almost like a second pair of wings.

Nuriel stared at the beast. Her whole body was shaking with fear and anger. It was the first thing on this damned island to actually take a piece of her. She could see her own blood smeared around the tip of its beak and on its talons.

But she had taken a piece of it in turn. Salty blood was dripping from its chest feathers, blood the same color as the smear on St. George’s blade.

The bird raised its head and shrieked at her again. It crouched down, as it readying itself to hurl itself at her again.

Before it could, Nuriel rushed it, slashing at it wildly. Apparently it had not expected this sudden aggressive response, as it jerked back and tumbled off the railing.

Nuriel looked over the side. The bird had landed in an awkward heap in the sandy grass below. It flopped about until it got its wings situated and its feet underneath it. Then it angrily hopped away, flapping as it went. Each hop took it higher and higher, until it managed to get airborne.

Nuriel watched as the terrible thing flapped away. She noted with grim satisfaction that it was having trouble staying up, on account of the wing closest to its wound being out of rhythm. Good.

As Nuriel stood there on the deck, gazing out into the distance, the haze of anger and fear slowly lifted from her mind, and she began to take notice of things, things such as how the ocean breeze was chilling her sweat-drenched face, how her arms and legs were starting to shake, and how points of hot pain were making themselves known.

Nuriel looked down. Her shirt was torn around the belly where the bird’s talons had ripped through, and tiny dark rivulets of blood were starting to seep into the fabric.

Then she looked over to her right hand, where St. George was still held tightly in her fingers. Dark red blood dripped from the blade onto the weatherworn deck.

Then she lifted her free hand to her ear, which was burning hotly. The pain flared up at her touch, and when she moved her hand away, she saw drops of her own blood on her fingertips.

Nuriel rubbed her fingertips together. Oh, this was not good.

Then suddenly her upper body pitched forward. Nausea twisted her guts, and she heaved once.

Realizing what was happening, Nuriel dropped St. George, wrapped her arms around her aching stomach, and clamped her jaws shut like a vice. _No!_ She was _not_ going to let this happen! She had worked too hard to get those fruits into her belly to just let them just spew their way out now!

Her stomach lurched and heaved, and hot bile leapt into her throat. Still, Nuriel refused to let it win. She sank to her knees, arms still hugging her stomach, head bowed and watering eyes squeezed shut as she gritted her teeth and waged war on herself. She wasn’t going to let it win, she wasn’t going to let it win, she wasn’t going to let it win…

Finally the worst of the nausea passed, and her stomach finally stopped rebelling. Nuriel crawled over to the edge and spat out the mouthful of saliva, mucus, and what little bits of stomach acid and fruit that had managed to make its way past her throat. It fell down, down, and down to plop onto the sand below.

That done, Nuriel finally allowed herself to curl into a ball and collapsed onto the deck of the ship. Her whole body was trembling now, her wounds were still bleeding, and now she felt sick inside. And she had only been here for a little over a day!

It was official. She was going to die.


	4. Blood on the Deck

Climbing back down from the _Carmilla’s Fancy_ was a slow and painful process, but Nuriel wasn’t left with much choice. She was hurt, and she needed to find out how badly.

Finally she dropped down to the sand. Her knees buckles and she staggered, which sent fresh lances of pain across her stomach. Wincing, she grabbed onto a nearby beech trunk and pulled herself back up to her feet and started limping toward the water.

The sun was dipping toward the horizon, but it hadn’t reached it yet, so there was still plenty of light to see by. She waded in up to her calves and slowly pulled the tails of her shirt out of her trousers to inspect the damage.

The cuts were painful, but fortunately shallow. They were bleeding freely, but it didn’t look like anything important had been punctured. Nuriel carefully knelt down and washed them the best she could. The salt water set the fires burning anew and brought fresh tears to her eyes, but she endured.

When she had gotten most of the filth off, she cupped water in her hand and gingerly washed her ear.

The information she got from her fingers wasn’t good. That bird had taken a decent chunk out of her ear, and the flesh that remained was torn and ragged. Just touching it caused the burning pain to flare up.

Nuriel shivered. She was fucked. She was utterly fucked. She might not be in any danger of bleeding out, but wounds like that were sure to get infected. She would die just as easily from that as she would from getting ripped apart, and probably a lot more slowly at that.

Biting down on her lower lip, she glanced around to ensure that nothing was stalking her. Then she yanked out the strips of linen that she had used to bind her breasts and wrapped them around the cuts on her stomach. The pressure brought fresh tears of pain to her eyes, but she knotted them tight and gingerly tucked her shirt back in.

With any luck, the cuts would close without infection. The missing chunk of her ear was gone for good, but it wasn’t the first time someone had taken a large piece of flesh from her, and it was a lot less crippling than last time. At least she could still hear. At least she could-

_The white-hot blade sliced through flesh, charring in its wake. Nuriel shrieked and bucked, but the restraints held her in place as Master Reginald coldly made good on his threat._

_Sitting restrained across from her, Papa wept as he watched. He had to watch. Master Reginald had warned him not to turn away, lest he take off a larger chunk._

_Finally it was done, and Nuriel collapsed, weeping around a mouthful of blood and pain. Ignoring her agony, Master Reginald took the lump of flesh into his gloved hands and turned to Papa. “I trust I’ve made my point,” he said coldly, and tossed the lump right into Papa’s lap. Papa grimaced in disgust, but he said nothing. Master Reginald had told him that Nuriel would lose one finger for every word Papa said._

_“She will live,” Master Reginald continued as he dispassionately pulled off his gloves. “But disappoint me again, and I’ll take something she cannot afford to live without. Do you understand me?”_

_Nuriel was barely paying any attention. All she knew was pain. Pain, and a gaping emptiness where there hadn’t been one, an emptiness that told her that she would never be the same, never be-_

Nuriel’s face twisted up, and she angrily wiped away the tears that had started forming. _Stop it,_ she told herself. _Nothing’s gained from going back there. Papa’s dead. Master Reginald is dead. It’s just you. And if you survived that, you can survive this._

It was a nice thought, but she could only wish that it was true.

Once she had calmed herself down, Nuriel sighed and turned back to the _Carmilla’s Fancy._ Getting back aboard was not going to be easy, but it was her best chance to find someplace halfway safe.

The first time she had climbed up, she hadn’t had to worry about moving in any particular way. This time she had to make sure not to bend at the waist too much, to rely on her arms’ to pull herself up through the ladder of branches.

It hurt more than going down did.

Finally she was able to pull herself onto the deck. She rolled onto her back and just lay there, gasping in agony.

She was _so_ fucked.

When the burning had ebbed down into a tolerable throbbing, Nuriel gingerly rolled over and pushed herself up with her palms. Her legs felt wobbly beneath her, but she could stand.

All right, she had the ship to herself now. The bird had fled, and with any luck it would stay away.

Then Nuriel cast a glare over to the captain’s quarters, where its nest was. So long as that was there, there was no guarantee that it wouldn’t be back.

It took some work, but Nuriel was able to wrestle both doors shut. There. At least that damn bird wasn’t going to be slinking back in while she slept.

In the meantime, she needed a place of her own to sleep, and it wasn’t going to be out in the open. Nuriel warily eyed the hatch that led down to the cargo hold. It was shut, so maybe there was a chance that nothing had crawled in.

Opening it sent fresh lances of pain across her belly, but she winced and endured. The sun was close to setting and provided little light down the wooden stairs. Nuriel turned her head this way and that, trying to catch some kind of glimpse of anything that might be lurking within.

When nothing leapt at her face or growled in warning, she began to climb down the steps.

The steps groaned under her feet, but they held her weight, which was good sign. Also, while the ship’s interior smelled plenty damp and musty, she couldn’t pick out anything that smelled especially animalistic, no sign of anything taking up residence in the crew’s absence. Another good sign.

Nuriel sniffed again. Speaking of the crew, she didn’t even smell anything like decaying flesh. Well, maybe fortune was favoring her for once. No angry beasts, and no angry ghosts. Two points in her new home’s favor.

Still, not being able to see much of her surrounding put her ill at ease. This was not the first time she had been forced to sleep in a strange, dark place, and those instances had not always gone well.

Hoping against hope that nothing would disturb her that night, Nuriel went back up the steps and pulled the hatch closed again. Then she carefully felt her way back down until she found a corner next to a post that seemed reasonably dry.

Nuriel eased herself down and stretched out her legs. She shifted her weight around until she found a position that put little pressure on her stomach. Then she closed her eyes.

Nuriel had a number of rituals that she employed whenever she needed to fall asleep quickly. Given the number of uncomfortable places and situations she had gotten herself into over the years, she had gotten quite adept at snatching whatever bits of rest that she could no matter where she was or how much danger she was in.

Counting rats. Yes. Just imagine a ship’s hold, with rats darting from one end to the other. Picture the gentle rocking of the ship, the creaking of the timbers, the clanging of the ship’s bell, and count. One rat, two rats…

She got as far as seven before the darkness took her.

…

_Laying a hand on Nuriel’s chest, the local girl gently pushes her back, so that Nuriel is lying flat on her back in the sand. Her ears fill with the sound of the night surf washing against the shore, and far off, the crew is still singing merrily around the bonfire._

_Nuriel doesn’t care about any of that. All she can see is the girl’s dark eyes, like two pools of liquid night, and her smile, her teeth shining bright in the shadows that cover her face. Her curly black hair falls in waves around her bare shoulders, and when she slowly lays her body across Nuriel’s, it spills down onto Nuriel’s chest like a curtain._

_Their lips meet, and Nuriel can’t keep herself from groaning out loud._

_The girl sits up again, her legs straddling Nuriel’s hips. Their gazes still locked, the girl calmly reaches up and unwraps her garment from around her middle, loosening it. A casual push, and it drops down in a pile around her waist._

_Nuriel inhales sharply._

_Still smiling, the girl closes her eyes and lets out a pleased sigh._

_When she opens them again, they are now the color of freshly spilled blood and glowing like embers. Her smile widens, exposing knifelike fans._

_And when she dips down again, she goes not for Nuriel’s lips, but her neck._

…

_Thump._

Nuriel’s eyes snapped open. There was the rush of bewilderment that came from being abruptly wakened, but that was banished from her mind with practiced ease. Within moments the dream was forgotten, sleep was forgotten, she had remembered where she was and why, and was on high alert.

It was now in the dead of night, if the complete darkness surrounding her was any indication. Nuriel took quick stock of herself. Her stomach and ear still ached, but not as badly as they had before. More importantly, she was untouched.

However, she was not alone.

_Thump. Skitter._

There was something on the deck. She could hear its claws scratching the wood.

Her right hand started shaking. She quickly covered it with her left and listened. Maybe it was just some tree-dwelling animal that had wandered on board, like another monkey or something like that.

Then she heard a hoarse, cackling cry, a very familiar one at that. Nuriel felt icy fingers of fear slide down her back. The bird was back.

She listened as it walked across the deck, sometimes pausing to claw at the timbers. She was pretty sure that it couldn’t get in, so all she had to do was wait until it left. In time it would realize that hunting her was futile and give up.

And maybe if she wished hard enough she would end up growing wings herself to fly her away.

The bird called out again. It wasn’t the harsh cackle of warning from before, nor was it the screeches of pain as it flew off. This call was shrill and drawn out, clearly some kind of message.

A message that was answered.

Another call responded from further off, and Nuriel heard the sound of flapping wings. Then there was another call, and another, and another. She closed her eyes and mentally recited every profanity that she knew. Not only was the bird back, but it had brought friends.

Soon the air was filled with flapping wings, angry cries, and thumps on the deck above as the birds all came in for a landing. She couldn’t even begin to guess how many there were; she just knew that if they somehow managed to get in then she would be torn apart.

She heard them hopping across the deck and scratching at the hatch. They knew where she was, and they had come for blood.

The scratching grew louder as the birds started to go at the deck itself, and something soft landed on her head. Nuriel jerked, and instinctively covered her hand. More of the stuff fell across her fingers. Sawdust. The birds were looking for weak points in the deck and trying to claw their way through.

Nuriel eased herself up and looked around. There was next to no light to see by, but here and there were tiny cracks and holes in the ship’s hull to let in slivers of moonlight. One hole in particular looked large enough for her to see through. She crept along, one hand feeling her way while the other clutched St. George, with her heart pounding away the whole time.

She made it to the hole. Kneeling down, she got in close to take a look. Outside, she couldn’t see much other than the moonlit sands sinking into the water. She maneuvered her body around, trying to get a glimpse of the sky.

Suddenly her vision was taken up by a single golden eye, staring through the hole back at her.

Nuriel fell back as the bird screeched in anger. It went to work attacking the hole by jamming its beak through to widen it.

Nuriel stared in horror as the bird aggressively ripped at the decaying hull, sometimes using its beak while other times its talons. Other birds were answered its calls, and she could hear them swooping in to attach themselves to the ship.

Not knowing what else to do, she stabbed St. George at the dark-feathered talon that was shoving its way into the hole. It immediately withdrew with an angry hiss.

Then Nuriel felt something grab onto St. George’s blade from the other side. Panicked, she tried to pull him back, but the bird yanked again.

No, no, no, no! This couldn’t happen! She couldn’t end like this, torn apart by a flock of feathered monsters, with her only possession that meant anything to her stolen and defiled.

Nuriel braced her legs against the wall and pushed with all her strength as she pulled back with both arms. She was _not_ going to let St. George go! Papa had given him to her, Papa had made her promise to take care of him! If she was going to die, it was going to be with St. George in her hands, blood on his blade, and not carried away to adorn some flying monstrosity’s nest!

She pulled once, twice, and then finally managed to yank him free. She was sent sprawling onto her back as the bird outside screamed in pain and rage.

Dazed, Nuriel lifted St. George up. Sure enough, there was a streak of dark red on the blade. She had managed to take a piece after all. Well, there was that comfort at least.

Then she giggled. Some comfort. She was moments away from a very gory, very painful end, but hey, at least she still had her knife.

Then, audible even over the birds’ screeching and squawking, a whistle sounded from off in the distance.

A shrill _human_ whistle.

The birds all stopped there clawing and cackling, and for one bewildering moment there was complete silence.

A harsh, guttural sound that was part roar, part snarl, and part scream responded, and Nuriel heard something that was very much like several very large dogs huffing as dozens of feet pounded the sand.

Then the birds began to scream.

Nuriel had no idea what was going on. It sounded like there was a war going on outside, one filled with avian shrieks of rage and pain. The birds were going to war with _something_ apparently, something that equaled them in numbers and savagery. She heard several of the birds’ cackles get suddenly cut off, followed by growls and the sound of ripping flesh and snapping bones.

Then the deck above thumped again as the new somethings leapt on board. Nuriel could hear them scurrying this way and that as they attacked the birds, could see where the beams of moonlight were cut off as their bodies passed over the holes.

How long the fight lasted, she had no idea, but before she knew it the remaining birds had given up. At least the sound of their squawking drew further and further away as they retreated into the night sky.

Above and below, her unlikely rescuers continued to dart this way and that, apparently finishing off any bird too wounded to fly and probably making a meal of their remains. There was a lot of growling, a lot of ripping, and a lot of breaking.

And Nuriel was lying very, very still.

She had no idea exactly what had shown up to drive the birds off, but she wasn’t foolish enough to believe that they were actually on her side. No, it was just some rival pack of animals, one that would be more than happy to rend her apart in the birds’ stead.

However, there was one advantage in her favor, and that was that they didn’t know she was there. So if she stayed very still and prayed to whoever might be listening that they didn’t smell-

The sounds of feasting stopped. And then she heard something sniffing.

Aw _fuck._

The boards of the deck creaked as the newcomers walked this way and that, sniffing and snarling. Nuriel held St. George to her chest with both hands and closed her eyes.

Then whoever it was that had let out that whistle that had sounded off the attack whistled again. In response, the newcomers immediately retreated, leaping off the ship to the sands below and scurrying away.

Oh.

Well.

That happened.

Nuriel was internally debating the pros and cons of unclenching her muscles and quite possibly even moving when something new thumped onto the deck. It stood still for a moment, and then began to walk across it.

Whatever it was, it was lighter of foot than even the birds. Nuriel could barely hear the padding of its footsteps as it made its way from the stern to the…

It stopped next to the hatch.

Nuriel held her breath.

Then with an agonizing creak, the hatch was hauled open, letting moonlight shine into the storage hold.

And then something stepped onto the top step of the stairs.

Though every muscle was tensed up with terror, Nuriel forced herself to at roll slowly onto her side to face whatever it was that was coming down, whether it be the biggest and nastiest bird there was or one of those scaly monsters or a man-sized spider.

It was none of those things.

Nuriel’s gaze drifted from the bottom of the stairs to the top. And standing there, silhouetted against the stars, was a human form.

It was a woman, one with long and wild hair and a ragged dress. Her features were completely shrouded in darkness, but Nuriel could see a pair of shining scarlet eyes, staring directly down at her.

The breath caught in Nuriel’s throat. Her dream returned to her. The red-eyed monster in the jungle was real.

Time seemed to slow and stretch on and on as they two held each other’s gazes, the monster’s calm, burning gaze boring into Nuriel’s terrified eyes.

Then, so suddenly it sent a jolt of surprise down Nuriel’s spine, the red-eyed monster suddenly looked away, up toward the sky.

Nuriel blinked. It took less than a second, just a quick shuttering of her eyes. Nevertheless, the red-eyed monster was right in front of her, but in the space of time it took for her eyelids to briefly pass down and up again, it was gone.

And then the hatch swung closed, seemingly of its own accord.

Nuriel waited in the dark, listening intently. Her ear was throbbing again, as were the cuts on her belly, but she pushed the pain out of her mind and tried to pick out any sign of the red-eyed monster’s movement.

There was none. It was gone.

Nuriel remained where she was, hands clasped around St. George’s handle and pressing him to her chest, for the rest of the night.

…

When Nuriel’s eyes opened again, she was still lying flat on her back, hands clutching St. George to her chest, staring right up at the ceiling.

It was daytime. Exactly when, she had no way of really telling, but the sun was up and seeping through the cracks and holes that dotted the _Camarilla’s Fancy’s_ hull.

She had survived the night.

She had made it.

Nuriel slowly closed her eyes and opened them again. Then she let her head fall to the left, so that she was looking toward the hole that the bird had been trying to break through.

Nothing.

So far, so good. Nuriel righted her head, and then let it drop to her right, laying her cheek flat against the wood.

Immediately agony flared up in her ear, bringing tears to her eyes. Nuriel gasped and immediately jerked her head away, relieving the pressure.

Her ear continued to throb. Nuriel lay as still as she could, waiting for the pain to recede into something manageable.

Gradually the fire cooled, but it didn’t die, and that scared Nuriel the most. Pain she could manage, but if anything it was now hurting more than it had the night before.

_Infection._

Nuriel shivered. She had seen what an infected wound could do, had seen small cuts turn into ugly, rotting messes that grew and grew, had seen fully grown men be reduced to shivering, delirious wrecks when they got too bad. She had seen many of them die.

Though her chin was trembling, Nuriel closed her eyes and took a moment to compose herself. Then she gingerly rolled around the best she could and pushed herself up.

At the very least, the wounds in her stomach didn’t seem infected. They still ached, but they didn’t burn. Hopefully in time they would heal.

Hopefully.

Careful to not upset anything that might split open, Nuriel limped her way to the stairs. The hatch was closed, so most of it was covered in shadow, but she could make out their shapes at least.

There was something on them.

Nuriel paused. There, sitting on one of the middle steps was a basket. And there was something in the basket. The red-eyed monster must have left it.

Which meant that it had returned while she had been asleep. It had reopened the hatch and left the basket while she had been asleep. Now _that_ was something that she was not comfortable with at all.

Nuriel continued to move slowly forward, now more out of caution than pain. The basket didn’t move, so it probably didn’t contain tiny flesh-eating beetles or giant worms or poisons snakes or something like that, but she was ruling no possibility out. She ascended the first few steps and looked inside.

Fruit. The basket was full of fruit. There were a couple of the yellow fruits she had pilfered from the monkeys, as well as some that were bright red and spiky. There were a couple of small green ones with rough skins, and a several smaller ones that honestly looked like blue grapes. And in the center was something long, fat, and purple.

Nuriel recognized exactly none of it.

What was more, there was a piece of paper lying on top. And on the paper was writing.

Nuriel picked it up and walked over to one of the beams of sunlight that was pouring in through a hole. Her reading skills were rusty due to recent lack of use, though they were fortunately passable. Papa had made sure of that.

And the note was simple.

_Hello._

_Do not be afraid. I am a friend._


	5. Watching from Afar

_A gift given freely is not free. Only pay the price you know in advance._

Nuriel left the basket where it lay on the steps. Morning had brought both hunger and thirst in great quantities, but she was not so desperate as to trust the red-eyed monster’s benevolence.

She wasn’t exactly sure what she was expecting from the deck of the ship, but she was surprised by how little she found. At a cursory glance one might be forgiven for not realizing that a war had taken place at all. Here and there she found a dark feather stuck in the timbers or a dark stain of blood, but there were no mangled corpses, no shattered bones or shredded organs. Nuriel made her way to the rail and peeked over. Even the sand looked like it had been cleaned and swept.

Interesting.

Holding her aching stomach with one hand, Nuriel then turned her attention to the place that had started the whole mess. The captain’s quarters were no longer shut tight like she had left them. Rather, one door was lying ajar.

Nuriel considered leaving it like that. The last time she had poked around that place had proven to be a very bad idea. For all she knew a straggler of that flesh-hungry flock had taken up shelter in there.

But then, just leaving it there could be just as dangerous. Besides, given what a thorough job those snarling creatures had done chasing them off, she truly doubted any were left.

With a sigh, she limped her way over.

The musky scent of the bird’s nest hit her before she even reached the door. Nuriel wrinkled her nose and frowned. Yes, the stench was still there, but not nearly as bad as it had been the other day. In fact, it smelled much weaker. Huh.

Nuriel edged the loose door open with her foot and peeked inside. A moment later she opened it all the way.

The nest was gone. She hadn’t really gotten much of a good look at it the day before due to having all of her attention taken up by a face full of awful, but she did remember a disgusting mess of twigs, bones, and broken furniture, all of it streaked with droppings.

But now it was all gone. The mess had been cleared out, the destroyed furniture removed, and even the droppings had been cleared away, leaving a wide open space. It wasn’t exactly homey, but it wasn’t a nightmare either.

So, during what fitful moments of sleep she had managed to capture, her supposed “friend” had not only snuck a breakfast into the hold for her to find, but also thoroughly cleaned the place up, removing all trace that the birds had ever been there at all.

That scared her even more than the thought of sharing the island with a host of monsters.

All of the other monsters she had encountered were just monsters of the normal kind. They were dangerous and pitiless and hungry and spiteful, but in the end they were just animals, and if she managed to learn their habits then she could probably coexist quite peacefully with them, assuming that she didn’t upset anything like those birds again. But the red-eyed monster was completely different. It was intelligent. It had thoughts and feelings like a person. It had somehow wiped out an entire flock of flesh-eaters in a matter of minutes and cleaned up the evidence. It was leaving her notes. It was leaving her _gifts._ There was someone else on the island, and they knew that she was there. They had _fixated_ on her.

There was nothing in the world more dangerous than the attention of another person.

Indifference was safe. To be ignored was to be given a chance. But to have a being of power pay attention to her was the worst possible scenario, especially when it was someone that she didn’t know anything about. Were they even a person at all? It was clear that they were probably something more than human.

Nuriel had never had much to do with the unseen world beyond her own. Oh, she was certain that it existed in one form or another, but so long as it was content to ignore her then she was going to extend the same courtesy. And if God was how the priests and reverends described him, then she was quite certain that he was more occupied with the comings and goings of kings, popes, and heroes to pay much attention to a lonesome girl scraping a living at the bottom of the barrel.

But that strategy was predicated on mutual disinterest. If there were gods, devils, ghosts, angels, fairies, and the rest of their otherworldly kin out there, then she was going to respect their privacy and stay out of their way.

But now she had attracted the attention of this one.

This wasn’t good.

…

Nuriel threw the whole basket of fruit over the side of the ship.

It was a rash decision, but she wasn’t going to accept the gift of some unknown devil. After all, wasn’t that what all the stories warned of, about not taking gifts of food from fairies, spirits, and other principalities? Just taking a single bite could cost Nuriel her soul!

However, as she stood panting at the port staring down at where all the fruit lay in the sand below, Nuriel came to realize two unfortunate drawbacks from her hastiness.

First, the monster would likely return, and it would see how its gift had been rejected.

Second, she was still _famished._ She had eaten nothing other than a few coconuts and those fruits taken from the monkeys, and in that time she had done a great deal of walking, running, and being terrified for her life. If she didn’t get something to eat soon, then it wouldn’t matter if she angered the red-eyed monster or not.

Nuriel closed her eyes and mentally counted down from ten. Then she did it again. She couldn’t afford to panic. Now was her most dangerous hour, and what she did next could save or damn her. She needed a plan.

Nuriel looked over to the captain’s quarters again. She hadn’t taken more than a cursory glance before, just enough to confirm that it had been cleaned out. Maybe something had been left behind, something she could use.

Keeping the doors wide open, Nuriel went back inside. The furniture was all gone, though given the sort of condition it had been in, that was probably for the best. The bunk was still set in the wall, sans mattress. And the windows were all smashed in, no doubt by the birds themselves to allow for access, which pretty much eliminated the room as a viable place for her to live unless she managed to find a way to board them up.

Regardless, there didn’t seem to be anything of value left. Seeing how she had yet to see any corpses, the surviving members of the crew had probably already taken everything that would be of use and abandoned the ship, probably only to meet some other fate deeper inland.

Or maybe they were still out there. Maybe she wasn’t alone on the island after all.

Nuriel wasn’t sure how she felt about that. After all, having actual grown men about would increase her chances of survival, sure, but that was presuming that they took her in no questions asked. Plus, a bunch of sailors marooned on a deadly island would no doubt be quick to find use for a young girl that had suddenly shown up in their midst, use that wasn’t all that preferable to what the monsters would do to her.

As the thought sent shivers down her spine, Nuriel found herself hoping that they were dead.

Of course, it was still possible that this was the red-eyed monster’s ship. Maybe after it had been run aground, it had found no further use for the crew and ate them. Now that was a cheery thought.

Sighing, Nuriel turned toward the door.

Then she paused. There was something there, something she had missed during her cursory scan.

It was a small wayfarer’s chest, only a foot in length and a third of that in height. It was old, its edges cracked and faded and metal bolts black with corrosion. But it was on one piece.

Nuriel swallowed. Another “gift,” one that required her to manually open it to see what was inside. Anything could pop out at her, like a serpent or some kind of explosive. She carefully cracked the lid open and looked inside.

Then the breath caught in her throat.

It was a sailor’s chest, filled with any number of useful tools. There was a small bronze spyglass, a compass, a large hunting knife, a small mallet, several spools of flax thread, a ticking pocket watch, and a small glass flask filled with something orange.

This was a far greater gift than the fruit had been. In here was just about everything she needed to survive.

But should she take it? She wasn’t sure. The fruit was one thing. Everyone agreed that food offered by otherworldly beings was not to be touched. This, however, was clearly of all human make, and had probably been left in the ship by the crew. More than likely her red-eyed friend had simply left it for her to find when it had cleared out the captain’s quarters. That ought to be all right, wouldn’t it?

Nuriel bit her lip. Her hands were shaking. Yes. Yes, this at least she should make use of. She would be foolish not to. After all, they were merely tools. And her soul would do her no good if she were dead.

That decided, Nuriel pillaged the chest.

…

The lagoon was unoccupied, save for the local herons wading around in the shallows. They stared at Nuriel as she stumbled over but didn’t retreat. That was fine. So long as they didn’t follow their nastier cousins’ example and start stabbing at her with those big, long beaks of theirs, then they were going to get along just fine.

As Nuriel stepped into the water, she noticed several quick movements beneath the surface. Fish. There was fish in the lagoon. That was what drew the herons. Now, there was a useful bit of information. Man did not live on fruit alone, or however the phrase went.

But that was something to be left for later. Nuriel headed for the falls, cupped her hands, thrust them beneath the curtain, and drank.

She was so thirsty that she expected to just drink and drink until her stomach burst at the seams, but the moment her throat was wetted, nausea twisted up from within her, doubling her over as she heaved.

There was little in her stomach to hurl back out, but by God it was going to try anyway, so Nuriel could do little more than remain bent over, her head partially in the waterfall’s spray, heaving nothing into the lagoon. She kept going and going until something spicy and disgusting came up. She spat it out and finally managed to straighten up.

The waterfall was splashing over her shoulder, splattering her face and soaking her hair. That was good. It hid the mess her face was. She sniffled, stepped out from the falls, and wiped away her blotchy eyes and stuffy nose.

Then she noticed the herons standing around, staring at her. Nuriel scowled at them. The hell were they looking at?

At least the sick feeling had left her. Sighing, Nuriel held her hands out and tried again.

Once her thirst had been quenched, she waded out from the lagoon and sat down on a rock in the shade of the willow trees.

Well, she had fresh water at least, and she had cleaned up a little. But she still needed food, _oh_ she needed food. Hunger gnawed at her stomach, an ever-growing hole that demanded to be filled.

She…she could still go back and gather the fruits she had thrown out. They probably were safe, and it would do her no good to let them go to waste just to make a point.

 _No!_ That was how they got you! She had to remain strong! Besides, the island was probably full of food. She just needed to go find it.

As Nuriel sat there musing, she heard something chirp.

It sounded like a bird…and yet it didn’t. There was a bit of a growl to it, like the squeak of a rat. And it was near.

Nuriel leapt to her feet, only to instantly regret it when the cuts in her stomach flared up. Wincing, she pushed the pain away and looked.

There was a… _thing_ nearby. It was about the size of a turkey but it looked more like a lizard, standing on two long, skinny legs in the sand, with a stiff tail that stuck of its back and two tiny arms clutched tight to its chest. Its neck was long and curving, and its head small and elongated, with tiny sharp teeth protruding from its grey snout. That being said, its body wasn’t scaly like most of the monsters she had seen, but was covered with a thin coat of fuzzy down of grey striped with black, with a red crest around the head.

The chirper seemed to be part lizard and part bird, combining aspects of both the lizardlike animals she had seen and the vicious birds that had attacked her. And Nuriel, who now deeply mistrusted anything with feathers, didn’t care for it at all.

The chirper gazed up at her, its large, yellow eyes wide and curious. It chirped again and hopped forward, its tiny claws kicking up sand.

Nuriel picked up a rock and threw it.

The chirper immediately scampered away, but stopped once it was out of throwing range. It turned to stare at her again.

 _What’s it thinking?_ Nuriel wondered. Was it simply curious about this strange, fleshy new animal? Or was it wondering if she was good to eat?

Nuriel didn’t feel like waiting to find out.

She charged, yelling and waving her hands about like a madwoman.

This finally seemed to convince the bird/lizard that the odd pink stranger wasn’t worth investigating, and it ran off.

Nuriel warily eyed it as it fled across the beach. She wouldn’t feel comfortable until it had left completely, and even then she didn’t trust it to not start shadowing her steps, waiting for the opportunity to dart it and see how she tasted.

Then, to her horror, she heard another chirp, one that hadn’t come from the chirper. This was followed by another, and then another, and then another.

A whole flock of the things came running across the beach to greet their comrade. Nuriel hastily bolted behind a large tree, silently praying that the one she had driven off wouldn’t inform the others that something soft and potentially tasty was mucking about.

Trembling, she peeked out. There had to be at least twenty of the little squeaking things. Maybe even thirty. Forty? It was hard to tell, more kept running out of the shadows. They were all gathered in a loose circle, chittering and squeaking at one another, some of them bouncing up and down while others frantically bobbed their heads. They were clearly communicating…something.

And that something was probably news of an easy meal, a strange, hairless monkey with soft pink skin.

Nuriel slid St. George from his sheath.

However, the chirpers didn’t look toward her. Rather, they were moving away from Nuriel’s hiding spot, back toward the _Carmilla’s Fancy_. Well, good! Let them! If they wanted the boat, they were more than welcome to it! Let them deal with the red-eyed monster!

_Run. Now. While they’re distracted._

It would be the smart thing. Nothing was ever gained by following potential danger, only from moving away from it. She had gotten a lucky break. She would be a fool to waste it.

 _Forget it, girl,_ Papa’s husky voice growled. _Let it be._

Nodding, Nuriel stood up and started to move away from the boat. She could find some other means of shelter.

Then she stopped. She stopped and looked back over her shoulder, to where the chirpers were excitedly rushing after…something.

Something that she kind of wanted to know about.

_Damn your curiosity, girl! It’ll get you killed!_

True, true. But still…

_Don’t do it, Nuriel. Just go._

Nuriel did not go. In fact she found herself turning back around. From she started moving the opposite direction that she ought to be going, back towards the boat, back to see what the chirpers were up to.

_Suit yourself, girl. But don’t come crying to me when you show up here in Hell._

Nuriel followed the tiny, birdlike tracks in the sand and the sound of the chirps. It didn’t take long to catch up to the flock. The chirpers had all gathered beneath the _Carmilla’s Fancy_ and were fast at work.

However, as she drew near Nuriel came to realize that they had no interest in the ship itself. Rather, the reason for their excitement was what lay below, in the sand.

The basket of fruit Nuriel had hurled over the side was still there, and the chirpers were busy dislodging all the fruit from the depressions they had made in the sand. Once they had gotten all the pieces loose, they pushed against them with their long hands, rolling them across the beach. Each piece of fruit had anywhere from three to six chirpers working together to move them along.

Well now. That was…strange.

Nuriel started to relax a little. Maybe the chirpers were fruit eaters? If so, then she had nothing to worry about.

Maybe.

Still, why were they pushing the fruit along instead of cutting them open and eating them where they found them? Maybe they had a nest nearby, with little baby chirpers to feed?

Now even more curious, Nuriel continued to follow the flock, maintaining a healthy distance while keeping them in sight. They led on a winding path of sand, one that wound between several hills that looked to be a high tide away from becoming islands, until they were moving around the cliffs.

As they rounded a corner, Nuriel came into another bit of good luck. The cliffs opened into a large grassy alcove, one that contained several gnarled trees that bore the same lumpy red fruit that the red-eyed monster had included in her fruit basket.

Nuriel almost wept with joy. A reliable food source, one that wasn’t guarded by territorial monkeys! All right, maybe she wasn’t doomed after all.

Unfortunately, there were other creatures about. She saw several other chirpers emerge from the grass, all of them pushing more of the red fruits along.

Hmmm, that could be a problem. If they fed on fruit, then they might object to her taking a few pieces for herself. Still, seeing how they weren’t sticking around to feast, it could be that they just visited the grove to grab a few choice pieces and bring them back to their nest. Maybe she could snatch a few bits when they were done.

The new fruit-pushing chirpers joined the ones she had been following, and they continue on, a bizarre procession of bird/lizard creatures, just rolling large pieces of fruit across a beach. If her life wasn’t still in mortal danger Nuriel might have found the sight hilarious.

The fruit grove was a lucky find, but Nuriel continued to shadow the flock. Maybe if she found out where the nest was, she could make sure to avoid it.

The flock rounded another corner of the cliff, and suddenly Nuriel found herself looking at a slope, one that led all the way back to the top.

And the chirpers continued on, now pushing the fruit up the slope.

Well. Damn. The cliff wasn’t nearly as high around here, and the slope wasn’t exactly all that steep, but the chirpers were still very small, and some of the fruits were larger than they were. Still they endeavored on, taking it slow and working together to get all the pieces up the slope. It was the damnedest thing Nuriel had ever seen, and there were now a lot of competition for that title.

As the chirpers finally neared the top, Nuriel caught sight of a tree with many low-hanging branches at the top of the cliffs, near the edge that overlooked the sea. She hurried over to the rough wall on the side of the slope and climbed up.

Here, the top of the cliff was covered with what looked like a divided field, one made up of two kinds of grass. One was shorter and greener, while the other was tall, dry, and yellow. The shorter green grass took up about two thirds of the field, while the tall yellow grass held the rest, pressing up against the jungle about half a mile off.

Nuriel hurried over to the tree and climbed up about a third of the length. Pulling out her new spyglass, she took a gander at her surroundings.

There was a herd of animals in the green part of the field, great, humped beasts with greenish-yellow skin and long faces with humped noses. They were big, easily over three times the size of a fully grown horse. Yet they didn’t seem to be aggressive. They were lowing about, lazily grazing. A pair of calves bounded around the adults, hoarsely crying out and chasing each other around. Each one was large enough to Nuriel to ride on.

As for the chirpers, they were almost swallowed up even by the shorter grass, though Nuriel could still track their movements by where the fruit rustled as they were pushed forward. Nuriel watched as the chirpers continued to move their bounty forward, heading toward the tall grass.

And then, right at the edge where the two grasses met, they just…stopped.

The fruit was all pushed together into a pile, one that rose up over the top of the grass. It looked almost like an offering.

The chirpers swarmed over the fruit, and for a moment Nuriel thought that they were finally going to feast. But no, none of them actually bit into the fruit. Instead they scratched at them with the tiny claws on their hands and feet, making them bleed. Red, yellow, green, and clear juice dribbled down the sides of the pile.

And then the chirpers simply vanished, darting away from the pile of wounded fruit to disappear into the grass.

Nuriel still had no idea what was going on, but now she was fascinated. Something was definitely up, and she had to know what it was.

Keeping absolutely still, Nuriel remained sitting in the crux of the tree’s branches, keeping an eye on the pile of fruit. It was then that she noticed that the herd of grazing animals were keeping a healthy distance between themselves and the tall yellow grass.

Except two.

The two calves were heading over to the pile of fruit, no doubt following the smell of the juice. The adults hadn’t noticed that their young had wandered off, and continued their contented grazing.

Nuriel felt a chill sweep down her spine. She was starting to put things together in her head. The pile of fruit wasn’t intended to feed the chirpers’ young, nor was it an offering.

It was bait.

The calves had reached the pile. They nudged the fruit with their snouts, their fat, red tongues coming out to lick the juice. One of them took an investigative bite. Finding it good, they began to eat.

Nuriel climbed a little higher to get a better look. Something was happening. She couldn’t see anything in the tall yellow grass, but she was certain that there was something in it.

Then she saw it. Movement. The tall yellow grass was swaying back and forth. Could it be the wind? No. There was only a gentle breeze, and it was blowing in from the coast, and the tall yellow grass wasn’t bending with it.

Heedless of their peril, the two calves continued to feast.

Suddenly one of the adult beasts lowed loudly in alarm. One of the calves raised its head to blink stupidly at its herd.

Another one of the beasts bellowed, and three of them broke off from the rest of the herd, rushing over to the calves, who continued to just stare at them. But Nuriel wasn’t focused on them. She was watching the tall yellow grass.

Despite this, when the attack came, it came so suddenly that Nuriel almost dropped out of the tree in surprise.

A high-pitched shriek filled the air. The calves leapt in response, but it was too late. _Something_ hit them, something that was the same dry yellow as the tall grass.

Nuriel watched in morbid fascination as the predators swarmed over the two poor calves. It was hard to figure out how many of them there were, or what they even looked like, but they weren’t chirpers, that much was for certain. They darted in and out, striking again and again, until the calves’ greenish-yellow skin became streaked with red, their hides bleeding as readily as the fruit had.

The charging adults came to a stop. The calves screamed for help, but their parents didn’t answer. They could already tell that it was too late.

One of the calves tried to push itself out of the attack only to succumb to its wounds. With one final scream it collapsed. As it did, one of the predators climbed onto its back, and Nuriel was finally able to get a good look.

It was yet another bird monster, though this one had more in common with the chirpers than it did with the actual birds that had attacked her the previous night: same bullet-shaped body, same stiff tail, same S-curved neck, same nimble claws instead of wings, and same long head ending in a toothy alligator snout rather than a beak. However, it was much, much bigger, standing nearly the same height as a fully grown man, and longer than two horses from snout to the tip of its tail. And proportion-wise, it was much thicker than the chirpers: more heavily muscled legs, longer claws, bigger neck, and bigger head. Its body was covered in a short coat of pale yellow feathers with black stripes, and though she couldn’t really make out its eyes even with the spyglass, they seemed to have a distinctly golden hue.

But there was something else special about it, something she could just barely make out. Nuriel focused the spyglass on the creature’s feet, which were digging into the fallen calf’s back. They also bent forward like a chicken’s, though obvious were much more densely muscled. But while the tips of the toes ended in sharp, dragonlike claws as expected, each foot had a special claw on the middle toe, one that was much larger than the others, curving up like a scythe.

As Nuriel watched, the creature leaned forward to grip with its hands, and it began scraping its feet across the calf’s back, its scythe-claws slicing through the hide like a butcher’s knife.

Nuriel swallowed. Butchers. Yes, that was a good name for it.

Both of the calves had mercifully expired, and the butchers set to work, methodically slicing off chunks of meat and gulping them down. Now that the killing had ended and the feeding began, Nuriel was able to get a better count of the things. There seemed to be around six…no, eight. There was eight. Five of them were about the same size as the one she had seen perched on the calf’s back, but three others were much smaller, probably young juveniles.

Despite the savagery of the kill, there did seem to be an odd orderliness about how they fed. The adults went first, slicing off great bloody chunks and gulping them down. But before the carcasses were even done, they moved back, allowing the juveniles to move in. They weren’t as precise as the adults with their slicing, but they made up for it with enthusiasm. Somehow two of them ended up with their jaws clamped down on either side of the same strip of meat, and rather than let go, they began to fight over it, tugging back fiercely while trying to jerk it free. Irritated, one of the adults walked over and swatted one of the fighting juveniles, making it release its end.

Further down the field, the adult grass-eaters looked on as their young were devoured. Then they slowly turned to walk back to the herd, writing the two calves off for their foolishness.

The butchers fed well but fed quickly, filling their bellies. When it seemed as if they had all eaten their fill, three of the adults moved forward. It was then that Nuriel noted that these three were different from the others, in that each of their snouts had a bright red dot on the end, and the pattern of black stripes was more wavy. They each cut off several slices of meat and lifted them with their mouths, but they didn’t eat them. Their prizes now carefully held, the whole pack left, disappearing quickly into the tall yellow grass, leaving the bloody carcasses behind.

When they were gone, the chirpers reappeared.

They seemed to come out of nowhere, swarming over the bloody bones, feasting on what bits of flesh that the butchers had left behind. As they did, Nuriel came to understand the full significance of what she had just seen.

Even with their numbers, the chirpers were obviously too small and weak to take down one of the larger animals. But somewhere and somehow, they had learned to get around that, to use the fruit to lure dumber animals away from the herd and nearer to the butchers’ hunting grounds, and in return the butchers would leave them the scraps. How such a relationship had formed, and how the chirpers had even learned to do such a thing, Nuriel couldn’t begin to guess, but she applauded the tiny creatures for their ingenuity.

As for herself, Nuriel’s own curiosity had taught her two very important things. First, the location of a fruit grove, one where she could harvest food on her own.

The second was even more important: stay well away from long grass.

At any rate, Nuriel had seen enough, and with the chirpers busy with their own feast, the grove was unattended. She quietly slipped down from the branches of the tree and headed back down the slope. As she ran, an idea was starting to form in her head, an idea given to her by the chirpers. They were tiny, defenseless creatures in a world of monsters several times their height, and yet they had learned to use what they had available to gain an advantage with no risk to themselves.

Maybe she could do the same.

…

The sun was finally setting. Nuriel had survived another day.

And not only had she survived, she now had a mission. She was going to catch her “friend” in the act.

She was positioned on top of a small, sheer-sided hill that sat upon one of the many tiny islands that dotted the main island’s outskirts. The top of the hill was covered with thick grass, and she was lying on her side, watching the _Carmilla’s Fancy_ through her new spyglass.

It wasn’t exactly comfortable. Her belly was still healing, and lying flat upon it hurt too much, hence why she was on her side instead, which still ached whenever she shifted her weight. Thankfully the night was warm and the sky clear. If it were to start raining again then she might as well just throw herself into the possession of the red-eyed monster.

The _Carmilla’s Fancy_ sat empty and abandoned. Nuriel had no idea how long it would take for the red-eyed monster to return, but she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that it would be back. She just had to remain alert and be ready when it arrived.

Nuriel checked the clifftops. She caught sight of a couple of those dome-headed assholes knocking their heads together like territorial mountain goats, but not much else. Presumably most of the monsters lived further in.

The night insects had already started to sing. Good. If they stopped, it was a sure indicator that her visitor had arrived.

Then, somewhere far off but not far off enough for her comfort, the Dragon roared.

Nuriel winced. Of all of the island’s mysteries, that was one that she hoped to never uncover. Let it reign over its realm however it saw fit. She was content to stay on the outskirts, well away from its jaws.

It was getting darker, but the sun had not fully set. Nuriel shifted her weight, carefully scratched her stomach in between the cuts, and settled herself down.

Time passed. The sun dipped lower.

Nuriel yawned. Damn it. Her sleep the previous night had been anything but complete, and now that she was lying still on soft grass, it was really catching up to her.

She shook her head. No, she couldn’t afford to doze off. She needed to stay awake and aware.

But the night was so warm, and the grass so soft…

Blinking, she reached up and gave her ravaged ear a squeeze.

The sharp pain surged through her, chasing away any thought of sleep. She winced, but hey, it had done the trick.

Then the insects stopped singing.

Nuriel held her breath. She looked this way and that, and then hurriedly snapped her spyglass back into focus.

The deck of the _Carmilla’s Fancy_ was still empty.

Nuriel licked her dry lips. Come on, where was it? It was near. She could practically feel it. Every hair on her body was on edge, her skin prickled with goosebumps despite the warmth of the night.

She checked the cliffs in hopes of seeing it climb down. No, nothing. The only thing moving were the leaves of whatever plants were tough enough to take root in the crevices along the stone wall.

The beaches were also empty. There was… _wait!_ Something was moving, something big was striding across the sands near the lagoon and…no, wait, damn it. It was just a heron.

Nuriel’s face twisted up with frustration. Where the hell was it? It _had_ to be close. It was the right place, the right time of night, the right _everything!_ Wasn’t it at least curious to see if she had left a note in return?

Then, as she swept her gaze over the brig’s deck for what felt like the hundredth time, she heard a feminine sigh of exasperation, coming from directly behind her.

Nuriel gasped and spun around. This proved to be a poor decision, as the sudden movement sent lances of pain across her stomach, causing her to double over. She pushed it from her mind and forced herself to look.

There was nothing there.

The sound of Nuriel’s heartbeat pounded away loudly in her ears. She _had_ heard it, hadn’t she? She was sure of it! It had been right behind her?

But now there was nothing there at all.

As Nuriel surveyed the beach, she then heard what sounded very much like a young girl’s giggle, coming from somewhere close by.

Nuriel came very close to pissing her own trousers.

Where _was_ it? It was near, It had to be! It was near, and…

…it knew where she was.

Nuriel suddenly felt very exposed. Not that the _Camarilla’s Fancy_ would have provided much in the way of shelter should the red-eyed monster decide to come for her, but it had to be better than where she was!

Nuriel slowly sat up straight and listened. The insects still weren’t singing, nor were there any animals calling out. It was still there.

Somewhere.

Lifting her spyglass back to her eye, she frantically searched the shadows, looking for any glint of red.

Then her spyglass slipped through her fingers as she clapped both hands over her mouth to keep from crying out.

There was someone standing on the deck of the ship.

It was again too dark for her to make out any features, but there was undoubtedly a woman there, over by the remains of the mast. Nuriel snatched up her spyglass, but her fingers were shaking so badly that it fumbled in her grasp and fell back into the grass. Mentally cursing, she grabbed it with both hands and brought it up to her eye.

The deck was empty again. There was no one there.

Nuriel let out a moan of despair. No, no, no, _no!_ It had been right there! She had been looking right at it! Where did it go?

_It knew you were there. You only saw it because it let you._

As Nuriel frantically searched every square foot of her surroundings, she felt her gut twist and sour. Despite all of her careful preparations, she had been found out, and easily at that.

She ought to run. She ought to run…where? She was exposed, out in the open, and if it wanted to run her down it could do so effortlessly. Hell, it probably had been standing right behind her! That was that sigh and laugh were all about. It had found her quite easily and thought that her attempts to expose it were amusing! And it somehow then crossed the distance between the hill and the ship in mere _seconds_ just so she could see it!

Even if she did run, where would she go? If she went too far, she risked running into the various night predators that roamed the island. The birds could find her again. Maybe even ghosts. After everything that had happened, she would not be surprised to find that the island truly was haunted! Hell, the red-eyed monster probably was some kind of dead, maybe the soul of one of the long-dead natives, or perhaps someone from the _Camarilla’s Fancy_. That would explain why it was hanging around the ship!

Tears welled up in her eyes. Sniffing, she wiped them away with the back of her wrist. She hated feeling trapped. Being all alone on an island of monsters was one thing, but being trapped was so much worse. She would have rather that she had drowned.

 _You’re alive,_ reprimanded the memory of Papa’s voice.

_Yes, but-_

_So stop your whimpering. You’re in trouble, but you’re alive. Every problem has a solution. Figure this one out._

Nodding, she let out a long, shaky breath. Papa was right. Nothing good would come from sitting around crying. Even if she couldn’t flee, she still had to act. She had to do _something!_

Unfortunately, the only real something was to return to the ship.

But she couldn’t! The red-eyed monster might still be there! It could be waiting for her!

Then, as Nuriel sat torn between possibly walking right into the devil’s lair and complete inaction, the night came back to life.

The insects began to sing again, filling the silence with their song. One of the domeheads showed up on the top of the cliff and started chuffing and grunting as it clawed at the ground for some reason. Night birds called to each other from across the jungle.

Nuriel slowly breathed out. That was as good an indication as any that the red-eyed monster was gone. Not a perfect one, true, but it was as good as she was going to get.

One hand holding onto her spyglass and the other clutching St. George, Nuriel stood up.

…

If sitting alone on the top of that grassy hill had left Nuriel feeling exposed, then climbing back onto the deck of the _Carmilla’s Fancy_ left her feeling outright naked. Already she had been attacked by that fucking bird, besieged by its friends, and had been visited by ghostly apparition that could apparently cross great distances within the blink of an eye and silence the night with its mere presence.

She pulled herself up from the branch onto the ship, only to wince in regret when it sent a flash of pain across the cuts in her stomach. She shook her head to clear it and tried again, this time more carefully.

The deck just seemed so much unsettling at night. The sky was clear, so there was plenty of moonlight shining down, but that just made the shadows from the masts reach longer. It reminded her of monoliths in a cemetery, monuments to the dead.

Nuriel glanced around. Well, nothing was jumping out at her, which was a welcome change. Still, she kept her steps light as she crossed the deck to inspect the place.

She didn’t have to look long.

Another basket of fruit was waiting for her; the _same_ basket in fact, recovered from where she had thrown it. And from the look of things it had been filled with the same kind of fruit as before, and in the same quantities.

What was more, there was a note lying on top of it.

Nuriel was shaking as she picked it up and held it to the moonlight.

 _Nice try!_ it read in the same elegant hand as before. Next to it was a drawing of a girl’s face, one with long dark hair. One eye was winking and her tongue was playfully sticking out of one side of her mouth.

Below it in one corner of the paper was a rough sketch of a boat sitting in a bunch of tree limbs. Across from it in the other corner was a hump, on which a figure was lying on its side, pointing a spyglass at the boat.

The sketches were rough and obviously done quickly, but the fact remained that they had been _done,_ while she had been watching the ship and entirely without her knowledge! The red-eyed monster had taken note of her spying, written out an amusing response complete with illustrations, retrieved the basket where it lay, filled it with fruit, and put both the basket and the note in place, all with her only catching the quickest of glances of it, and that had probably been intentional!

She had no chance of winning against such a foe. This wasn’t like the monkeys or the monsters that inhabited the island, which when all was said and done they were still only animals. This was a demon. Monsters she could handle, but what could one do against a demon?

Sweet Christ, what was she going to do?


End file.
